Skip to main content
Advanced Search

Filters: Tags: physiology (X) > Extensions: Citation (X)

4 results (44ms)   

View Results as: JSON ATOM CSV
Abstract (from http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/11-2296.1): Physiological tolerance of environmental conditions can influence species-level responses to climate change. Here, we used species-specific thermal tolerances to predict the community responses of ant species to experimental forest-floor warming at the northern and southern boundaries of temperate hardwood forests in eastern North America. We then compared the predictive ability of thermal tolerance vs. correlative species distribution models (SDMs) which are popular forecasting tools for modeling the effects of climate change. Thermal tolerances predicted the responses of 19 ant species to experimental climate warming at the southern site,...
Physiological intolerance of high temperatures places limits on organismal responses to the temperature increases associated with global climatic change. Because ants are geographically widespread, ecologically diverse, and thermophilic, they are an ideal system for exploring the extent to which physiological tolerance can predict responses to environmental change. Here, we expand on simple models that use thermal tolerance to predict the responses of ants to climatic warming. We investigated the degree to which changes in the abundance of ants under warming reflect reductions in the thermal niche space for their foraging. In an eastern deciduous forest system in the United States with approximately 40 ant species,...
How climate constrains species’ distributions through time and space is an important question in the context of conservation planning for climate change. Despite increasing awareness of the need to incorporate mechanism into species distribution models (SDMs), mechanistic modeling of endotherm distributions remains limited in this literature. Using the American pika (Ochotona princeps) as an example, we present a framework whereby mechanism can be incorporated into endotherm SDMs. Pika distribution has repeatedly been found to be constrained by warm temperatures, so we used Niche Mapper, a mechanistic heat-balance model, to convert macroclimate data to pika-specific surface activity time in summer across the western...
Effects of climate warming on wild populations of organisms are expected to be greatest at higher latitudes, paralleling greater anticipated increases in temperature in these regions. Yet, these expectations assume that populations in different regions are equally susceptible to the effects of warming. This is unlikely to be the case. Here, we develop a series of predictive models for physiological thermal tolerances in ants based on current and future climates. We found that tropical ants have lower warming tolerances, a metric of susceptibility to climate warming, than temperate ants despite greater increases in temperature at higher latitudes. Using climatic, ecological and phylogenetic data, we refine our predictions...