An alternative explanation for global trends in thermal tolerance

Ectotherms from higher latitudes can generally perform over broader temperature ranges than tropical ectotherms. This pattern is thought to reflect trends in temperature variability: tropical ectotherms evolve to be ‘thermal specialists’ because their environment is thermally stable. However, the tr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology letters 2017-01, Vol.20 (1), p.70-77
Main Authors: Payne, Nicholas L., Smith, James A., Arita, Hector
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activation energy
Animals
Arrhenius–Boltzmann
Arthropods - physiology
Biological Evolution
Climate change
Ecology
Ecosystem
Global warming
Janzen's hypothesis
macroecology
Metabolism
mountain passes
MTE
polar
Rapoport's rule
Species Specificity
Temperature
Temperature effects
Temperature tolerance
thermal specialist
Thermal stability
Thermal stress
Thermotolerance
Trends
Tropical Climate
Tropical environments
Variability
Vertebrates - physiology
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Summary:Ectotherms from higher latitudes can generally perform over broader temperature ranges than tropical ectotherms. This pattern is thought to reflect trends in temperature variability: tropical ectotherms evolve to be ‘thermal specialists’ because their environment is thermally stable. However, the tropics are also hotter, and most physiological rates increase exponentially with temperature. Using a dataset spanning diverse ectotherms, we show that the temperature ranges ectotherms tolerate (the difference between lower and upper critical temperatures, and between optimum and upper critical temperatures) generally represents the same range of equivalent biological rates (e.g. metabolism) for cool‐ and warm‐adapted species, and independent of latitude or elevation. This suggests that geographical trends in temperature variability may not be the ultimate mechanism underlying latitudinal and elevational trends in thermal tolerance. Rather, we propose that tropical ectotherms can perform over a narrower range of temperatures than species from higher latitudes because the tropics are hotter.
ISSN:1461-023X
1461-0248
DOI:10.1111/ele.12707