Affiliation:
1. Department of Ecology, Evolutionary, and Organismal Biology Iowa State University Ames Iowa USA
2. Ecology and Genetics Research Unit University of Oulu Oulu Finland
3. Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim Norway
4. Department of Biology Colorado State University Fort Collins Colorado USA
Abstract
AbstractSpecies' thermal tolerances are used to estimate climate vulnerability, but few studies consider the role of the hydric environment in shaping thermal tolerances. As environments become hotter and drier, organisms often respond by limiting water loss to lower the risk of desiccation; however, reducing water loss may produce trade‐offs that lower thermal tolerances if respiration becomes inhibited. Here, we measured the sensitivity of water loss rate and critical thermal maximum (CTmax) to precipitation in nature and laboratory experiments that exposed click beetles (Coleoptera: Elateridae) to acute‐ and long‐term humidity treatments. We also took advantage of their unique clicking behavior to characterize subcritical thermal tolerances. We found higher water loss rates in the dry acclimation treatment compared to the humid, and water loss rates were 3.2‐fold higher for individuals that had experienced a recent precipitation event compared to individuals that had not. Acute humidity treatments did not affect CTmax, but precipitation indirectly affected CTmax through its effect on water loss rates. Contrary to our prediction, we found that CTmax was negatively associated with water loss rate, such that individuals with high water loss rate exhibited a lower CTmax. We then incorporated the observed variation of CTmax into a mechanistic niche model that coupled leaf and click beetle temperatures to predict climate vulnerability. The simulations indicated that indices of climate vulnerability can be sensitive to the effects of water loss physiology on thermal tolerances; moreover, exposure to temperatures above subcritical thermal thresholds is expected to increase by as much as 3.3‐fold under future warming scenarios. The correlation between water loss rate and CTmax identifies the need to study thermal tolerances from a “whole‐organism” perspective that considers relationships between physiological traits, and the population‐level variation in CTmax driven by water loss rate complicates using this metric as a straightforward proxy of climate vulnerability.
Subject
General Environmental Science,Ecology,Environmental Chemistry,Global and Planetary Change
Cited by
1 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献