Ectotherm Size- and Age-At-Maturity in a Warmer, Variable and Resource-Poor World

Ectotherms tend to mature at smaller sizes as average temperatures rise, a pattern known as the Temperature-Size Rule (TSR), which also predicts earlier age at maturity. However, in natural environments, warming is often accompanied by increased thermal variability and limited nutritional resources. Using a bioenergetic model combined with factorial growth experiments on Daphnia, we investigated how temperature, food concentration, and food quality (Polyunsaturated fatty acid and sterol content) jointly shape size and age at maturity. We find that poor food quality narrows the upper thermal limit for TSR expression, while low food quantity restricts both upper and lower thermal bounds. Increased thermal variability shifts this range towards cooler temperatures. These findings suggest that the TSR may not hold under ecologically realistic conditions, especially when organisms are close to their thermal optimum where small concomitant increases of resource limitation and temperature variability with warming may lead to smaller yet older individuals at maturity.