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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 9, 2026

Field-Based Thermal Physiology Assay: Cold Shock Recovery under Ambient Conditions

Field-Based Thermal Physiology Assay: Cold Shock Recovery under Ambient Conditions

Published on: March 9, 2021

Heat freezes niche evolution.

Miguel B Araújo¹, Francisco Ferri-Yáñez, Francisco Bozinovic

¹Departamento de Biogeografía y Cambio Global, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC & Laboratorio Internacional en Cambio Global CSIC-PUC (LINCGlobal), Calle José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2, 28006, Madrid, Spain. maraujo@mncn.csic.es

Ecology Letters

|July 23, 2013

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Species physiological adaptation to climate warming is limited. Heat tolerance is conserved across terrestrial ectotherms, endotherms, and plants, while cold tolerance varies, suggesting hard upper thermal limits constrain adaptation to rising temperatures.

Keywords:

Bioclimatic envelope models CTmax, CTmin biological invasions climate change evolutionary rates lower thermal tolerance niche conservatism species distributions thermal adaptation upper thermal tolerance

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Area of Science:

Ecology
Evolutionary Biology
Physiology

Background:

Climate change is causing shifts in species phenology and distribution.
Understanding species' capacity for physiological adaptation to warming is crucial.
Previous research focused on ectotherms, leaving a broader understanding incomplete.

Purpose of the Study:

To analyze thermal tolerances across diverse terrestrial taxa (ectotherms, endotherms, plants).
To investigate whether physiological heat tolerance is conserved or evolves continuously.
To challenge existing views on species' climatic niche evolution.

Main Methods:

Global analysis of thermal tolerance data for 697 terrestrial ectotherm, 227 endotherm, and 1816 plant species.
Comparative analysis of heat and cold tolerance patterns across different taxonomic groups.
Evaluation of existing models of species' climatic niche.

Main Results:

Heat tolerance is largely conserved across terrestrial ectotherms, endotherms, and plants.
Cold tolerance exhibits significant variation both between and within species.
A pattern of conserved upper thermal limits challenges the notion of continuous niche evolution.

Conclusions:

Hard physiological boundaries constrain the evolution of high-temperature tolerance in terrestrial organisms.
Evolution of cold tolerance is more likely than heat tolerance evolution.
Conserved upper thermal limits may lead to underestimation of climate change risks for some species and predictable impacts on those near their thermal limits.