ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2019
Thermal tolerance patterns across latitude and elevation.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 104 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
104 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Untangling the Complexity of Climate Change Effects on Plant Reproductive Traits and Pollinators: A Systematic Global Synthesis.Global change biology · 2025Pooled it
- Limited capacity for rapid acclimation to marine heatwaves in coastal invertebrates.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- Sensitivity of Marine Pelagic Fish Catch Potential to Changes in Primary Production in a Global Fisheries Model.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Heat tolerance decreases and cold tolerance increases with elevation for a species-rich insect family on a tropical volcano.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Local Thermal Adaptation in an Insect-Transmitted Plant Pathogen: The Role of Virulence Trade-Offs.Evolutionary applications · 2026Article
- Butterflies with low thermoregulatory capacity show greatest upwards range shifts along an elevational gradient.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Nesting behaviour predicts heat tolerance evolution and climate vulnerability in bees.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Thermal Plasticity is Regulated by a Key MicroRNA During Range Expansion of an Invasive Fruit Fly.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Article
- Heat Tolerance and Its Plasticity in Freshwater and Marine Fishes Reflect Exposure to Extremes and Seasonal Variation in Habitat Temperatures.Ecology letters · 2026Review
- Evolutionary and environmental determinants of heat tolerance and acclimation capacity in herpetofauna.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Review
- Intra- and inter-specific differences of upper thermal limits in the sand darters (Percidae:Conservation physiology · 2026Review
- Scents on the slope: declining volatile emissions but stable predator-associated cues across elevation in alpine willows.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
- A freshwater resilient and connected network to sustain biodiversity under a changing climate.PloS one · 2026Article
- Addressing issues of experimental design, ecological realism and local adaptation for applications of ectotherm upper thermal limits.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Metabolic Adaptation to Following Temperature Acclimation in Fish on the Yun-Gui Plateau.Biology · 2025Article
- Global dataset for realized thermal and aridity niche limits for terrestrial vertebrates.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Coral Bleaching: The Equatorial-Refugia Hypothesis.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Belowground Communities in Lowlands Are Less Stable to Heat Extremes Across Seasons.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Velocity of Climate Change and the Vulnerability of Mountain Lake Landscapes.Environmental science & technology · 2025Article
44 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Linking variation in species' traits to large-scale environmental gradients can lend insight into the evolutionary processes that have shaped functional diversity and future responses to environmental change. Here, we ask how heat and cold tolerance vary as a function of latitude, elevation and climate extremes, using an extensive global dataset of ectotherm and endotherm thermal tolerance limits, while accounting for methodological variation in acclimation temperature, ramping rate and duration of exposure among studies. We show that previously reported relationships between thermal limits and latitude in ectotherms are robust to variation in methods. Heat tolerance of terrestrial ectotherms declined marginally towards higher latitudes and did not vary with elevation, whereas heat tolerance of freshwater and marine ectotherms declined more steeply with latitude. By contrast, cold tolerance limits declined steeply with latitude in marine, intertidal, freshwater and terrestrial ectotherms, and towards higher elevations on land. In all realms, both upper and lower thermal tolerance limits increased with extreme daily temperature, suggesting that different experienced climate extremes across realms explain the patterns, as predicted under the Climate Extremes Hypothesis. Statistically accounting for methodological variation in acclimation temperature, ramping rate and exposure duration improved model fits, and increased slopes with extreme ambient temperature. Our results suggest that fundamentally different patterns of thermal limits found among the earth's realms may be largely explained by differences in episodic thermal extremes among realms, updating global macrophysiological 'rules'. This article is part of the theme issue 'Physiological diversity, biodiversity patterns and global climate change: testing key hypotheses involving temperature and oxygen'.
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