SynthesisProceedings. Biological sciences2023
Effects of thermal fluctuations on biological processes: a meta-analysis of experiments manipulating thermal variability.
Synthesis in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Effects of thermal fluctuations on biological processes: a meta-analysis of experiments manipulating thermal variability.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Pooled it
- Thermal performance ofAoB PLANTS · 2026Article
- Order matters: Autocorrelation of temperature dictates extinction risk in populations with nonlinear thermal performance.Ecology · 2026Article
- Parental thermal environment affects offspring resilience to winter and spring weather anomalies.Current research in insect science · 2026Article
- Experimental winter warming increases activity with signs of potential DNA damage in common wall lizards.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Thermal Variability Modulates Altitudinal Differences in Metabolic Plasticity of the Asiatic Toad.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Allometric scale model reveals temperature effects on growth and reproduction in Daphnia magna.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Information and fitness in two-state systems: self-replicating individuals in a fluctuating environment.ArXiv · 2025Article
- Two Hypotheses About Climate Change and Species Distributions.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Mean daily temperatures predict the thermal limits of malaria transmission better than hourly rate summation.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Modelling the effects of diurnal temperature variation on malaria infection dynamics in mosquitoes.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Short-Term Thermal Stress Affects Immune Cell Features in the Sea UrchinAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Thermal variability is a key driver of ecological processes, affecting organisms and populations across multiple temporal scales. Despite the ubiquity of variation, biologists lack a quantitative synthesis of the observed ecological consequences of thermal variability across a wide range of taxa, phenotypic traits and experimental designs. Here, we conduct a meta-analysis to investigate how properties of organisms, their experienced thermal regime and whether thermal variability is experienced in either the past (prior to an assay) or present (during the assay) affect performance relative to the performance of organisms experiencing constant thermal environments. Our results-which draw upon 1712 effect sizes from 75 studies-indicate that the effects of thermal variability are not unidirectional and become more negative as mean temperature and fluctuation range increase. Exposure to variation in the past decreases performance to a greater extent than variation experienced in the present and increases the costs to performance more than diminishing benefits across a broad set of empirical studies. Further, we identify life-history attributes that predictably modify the ecological response to variation. Our findings demonstrate that effects of thermal variability on performance are context-dependent, yet negative outcomes may be heightened in warmer, more variable climates.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.