ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025
A universal thermal performance curve arises in biology and ecology.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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.
- Spatially explicit forecasts of tree insect and disease incidence across North American forests under future climate scenarios.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Protein turnover in plants-cost of synthesis, repair, and crop engineering opportunities.Plant physiology · 2026Review
- Unexpected Ecological Vulnerability in Tropical Pacific Heatwave Refuge.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Local trait responses and aquatic microclimates increase projected habitat suitability for field-collectedbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Temporal Autocorrelation Increases Temperature-Driven Extinction Risk by Clustering Stressful Conditions.Ecology letters · 2026Article
- Explaining the universality of biological thermal responses.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Reply to Arroyo et al.: Universality and diversity in thermal performance curves.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Direction and Progression of Thermal Acclimation Effects on Ciliated Protist Populations Both Depend on Direction of Thermal Change.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Scientists' Warning on the Rapid Evolution of Parasites in the Anthropocene.Evolutionary applications · 2026Article
- Thermal performance curves and age-stage, two-sex life table ofFrontiers in insect science · 2026Article
- Thermal window of exercise performance of the ecosystem engineer Lanice conchilega.Biology open · 2026Article
- Toward a general understanding of thermal performance curves in biology.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Temperature has strong impacts on all biological and ecological processes, and thermal performance curves (TPCs) have been employed recurrently to assess them. TPCs almost always take a particular asymmetric shape across the biological hierarchy, with many different competing mechanisms and models doing a similarly good job of trying to explain the TPC phenomenon. Here, we reveal that the ubiquitous exponential scaling of biological processes with temperature creates a mechanistic tendency for TPC data and models to collapse onto a single curve (which we call the Universal TPC, UTPC), explaining mathematically why biological systems respond to temperature in such a consistent way. We illustrate that many seemingly different TPCs actually approximate rescaled versions of the same curve, even when thermal performance estimates vary widely across organisms, systems, and contexts. We demonstrate remarkable UTPC collapse across the tree of life, with diverse datasets spanning microbes to vertebrates, and individual physiology to population growth. UTPC phenomena also provide a strong theoretical basis for predicting performance of warm-adapted organisms will be more sensitive to- and less tolerant of- temperature fluctuations; an important consideration in the context of climate change.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.