Journal article
Thermal-safety margins and the necessity of thermoregulatory behavior across latitude and elevation
JM Sunday, AE Bates, MR Kearney, RK Colwell, NK Dulvy, JT Longino, RB Huey
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | Published : 2014
Abstract
often exceed local air temperatures, implying a high degree of thermal safety (an excess of warm or cold thermal tolerance). However, air temperatures can be very different from the equilibrium body temperature of an individual ectotherm. Here, we compile thermal-tolerance limits of ectotherms across a wide range of latitudes and elevations and compare these thermal limits both to air and to operative body temperatures (theoretically equilibrated body temperatures) of small ectothermic animals during the warmest and coldest times of the year. We show that extreme operative body temperatures in exposed habitats match or exceed the physiological thermal limits of most ectotherms. Therefore, co..
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Awarded by National Science Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank the members of the Earth to Ocean research group at Simon Fraser University for feedback and discussions. J.M.S. was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the University of British Columbia Biodiversity Research Centre. N.K.D. was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and by the Canada Research Chairs program. The US National Science Foundation provided funding to R. K. C. (DEB 0639979 and DBI 0851245), J.T.L. (DEB-1157383; Project LLAMA), and R. B. H. (1038016). M. R. K. was funded by an Australian Research Fellowship (DP110102813) from the Australian Research Council. Thanks also to G. Quinn, who allocated salary to A. E. B. for contribution to this study.