Kimberly S. Sheldon

Impacts of climate warming on terrestrial ectotherms across latitude

The impact of anthropogenic climate change on terrestrial organisms is often predicted to increase with latitude, in parallel with the rate of warming. Yet the biological impact of rising temperatures also depends on the physiological sensitivity of organisms to temperature change. We integrate empirical fitness curves describing the thermal tolerance of terrestrial insects from around the world with the projected geographic distribution of climate change for the next century to estimate the direct impact of warming on insect fitness across latitude. The results show that warming in the tropics, although relatively small in magnitude, is likely to have the most deleterious consequences because tropical insects are relatively sensitive to temperature change and are currently living very close to their optimal temperature. In contrast, species at higher latitudes have broader thermal tolerance and are living in climates that are currently cooler than their physiological optima, so that warming may even enhance their fitness. Available thermal tolerance data for several vertebrate taxa exhibit similar patterns, suggesting that these results are general for terrestrial ectotherms. Our analyses imply that, in the absence of ameliorating factors such as migration and adaptation, the greatest extinction risks from global warming may be in the tropics, where biological diversity is also greatest.

The impact of seasonality in temperature on thermal tolerance and elevational range size

Environmental temperature variation can influence physiology, biogeography, and life history, with large consequences for ecology, evolution, and the impacts of climate change. Based on the seasonality hypothesis, greater annual temperature variation at high latitudes should result in greater thermal tolerance and, consequently, larger elevational ranges in temperate compared to tropical species. Despite the mechanistic nature of this hypothesis, most research has used latitude as a proxy for seasonality, failing to directly examine the impact of temperature variation on physiology and range size. We used phylogenetically matched beetles from locations spanning 60 degrees of latitude to explore links between seasonality, physiology and elevational range. Thermal tolerance increased with seasonality across all beetle groups, but realized seasonality (temperature variation restricted to the months species are active) was a better predictor of thermal tolerance than was annual seasonality. Additionally, beetles with greater thermal tolerance had larger elevational ranges. Our results support a mechanistic framework linking variation in realized temperature to physiology and distributions.

Biological Impacts of Thermal Extremes: Mechanisms and Costs of Functional Responses Matter

Thermal performance curves enable physiological constraints to be incorporated in predictions of biological responses to shifts in mean temperature. But do thermal performance curves adequately capture the biological impacts of thermal extremes? Organisms incur physiological damage during exposure to extremes, and also mount active compensatory responses leading to acclimatization, both of which alter thermal performance curves and determine the impact that current and future extremes have on organismal performance and fitness. Thus, these sub-lethal responses to extreme temperatures potentially shape evolution of thermal performance curves. We applied a quantitative genetic model and found that beneficial acclimatization and cumulative damage alter the extent to which thermal performance curves evolve in response to thermal extremes. The impacts of extremes on the evolution of thermal performance curves are reduced if extremes cause substantial mortality or otherwise reduce fitness differences among individuals. Further empirical research will be required to understand how responses to extremes aggregate through time and vary across life stages and processes. Such research will enable incorporating passive and active responses to sub-lethal stress when predicting the impacts of thermal extremes.

A New Model for Training Graduate Students to Conduct Interdisciplinary, Interorganizational, and International Research

Environmental challenges are often global in scope and require solutions that integrate knowledge across disciplines, cultures, and organizations. Solutions to these challenges will come from diverse teams and not from individuals or single academic disciplines; therefore, graduate students must be trained to work in these diverse teams. In this article, we review the literature on training graduate students to cross these borders. We then present a National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program at the University of Washington as a model of border-crossing graduate training focused on interdisciplinary, international, and interorganizational (I3) collaborations on environmental challenges. Finally, we offer recommendations from this program to those considering similar I3 training programs, including strategies for maintaining faculty buy-in, for scaffolding student training to cross borders, and for conducting focused group trips that give the students structured experience crossing all three borders simultaneously.

Beyond the Mean: Biological Impacts of Cryptic Temperature Change

Studies have typically used shifts in mean temperatures to make predictions about the biotic impacts of climate change. Though shifts in mean temperatures correlate with changes in phenology and distributions, other hidden, or cryptic, changes in temperature, such as temperature variation and extreme temperatures, could pose greater risks to species and ecological communities. Yet, these cryptic temperature changes have received relatively little attention because mean temperatures are readily available and the organism-appropriate temperature response is often elusive. An alternative to using mean temperatures is to view organisms as physiological filters of hourly temperature data. We explored three classes of physiological filters: (1) nonlinear thermal responses using performance curves of insect fitness, (2) cumulative thermal effects using degree-day models for corn emergence, and (3) threshold temperature effects using critical thermal maxima and minima for diverse ectotherms. For all three physiological filters, we determined the change in biological impacts of hourly temperature data from a standard reference period (1961-90) to a current period (2005-10). We then examined how well mean temperature changes during the same time period predicted the biotic impacts we determined from hourly temperature data. In all cases, mean temperature alone provided poor predictions of the impacts of climate change. These results suggest that incorporating high frequency temperature data can provide better predictions for how species will respond to temperature change.

Climate change creates rapid species turnover in montane communities

Recent decades have seen substantial changes in patterns of biodiversity worldwide. Simultaneously, climate change is producing a widespread pattern of species’ range shifts to higher latitudes and higher elevations, potentially creating novel assemblages as species shift at different rates. However, the direct link between species’ turnover as a result of climate-induced range shifts has not yet been empirically evaluated. We measured rates of species turnover associated with species’ range shifts in relatively undisturbed montane areas in Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and the Indo-Pacific. We show that species turnover is rapidly creating novel assemblages, and this can be explained by variable changes in species’ range limits following warming. Across all the areas we analyzed, mean species’ turnover was 12% per decade, which was nearly balanced between the loss of existing co-occurrences and the gain of novel co-occurrences. Turnover appears to be more rapid among ectothermic assemblages, and some evidence suggests tropical assemblages may be responding at more rapid rates than temperate assemblages.

The use of pasture trees by birds in a tropical montane landscape in Monteverde, Costa Rica

Conversion of forests to agricultural land may require many bird species to use resources in fragmented landscapes in order to persist. Pasture trees can make agricultural landscapes more hospitable for birds, but we do not know what factors promote bird visitation to pasture trees. Bird use of 26 focal trees of a common pasture species, Sapium glandulosum (Euphorbiaceae), was examined in three pastures in a montane landscape in Costa Rica to understand factors influencing bird visitation. Bird visits were analysed in relation to pasture tree size, distance from forest edge, degree of isolation and epiphyte load. Foraging resources (epiphyte or tree substrate) were also measured. From May–July 2012, 52 bird species from 20 families were recorded from 926 unique visits. Bird visitation was best explained by tree size, degree of isolation and epiphyte load such that larger, more isolated trees with higher epiphyte loads attracted more birds. Birds preferred food resources from focal trees (51% of visits) rather than their epiphytes (5% of visits). The results corroborate previous findings that mature pasture trees, even when isolated, may contribute more to species persistence than smaller trees.

Fifty Years of Mountain Passes: A Perspective on Dan Janzen’s Classic Article

In 1967, Dan Janzen published “Why Mountain Passes Are Higher in the Tropics” in The American Naturalist. Janzen’s seminal article has captured the attention of generations of biologists and continues to inspire theoretical and empirical work. The underlying assumptions and derived predictions are broadly synthetic and widely applicable. Consequently, Janzen’s “seasonality hypothesis” has proven relevant to physiology, climate change, ecology, and evolution. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this highly influential article, we highlight the past, present, and future of this work and include a unique historical perspective from Janzen himself.