Thermal reaction norms can surmount evolutionary constraints: comparative evidence across leaf beetle species.

ABSTRACT: One of the leitmotifs of the ecophysiological research on ectotherms is the variation and evolution of thermal reaction norms for biological rates. This long-standing issue is crucial both for our understanding of life-history diversification and for predicting the phenology of economically important species. A number of properties of the organism's thermal phenotype have been identified as potential constraints on the evolution of the rate-temperature relationship. This comparative study addresses several such constraints by testing whether the actual interspecific variation of thermal reaction norms across nearly hundred leaf beetle species agrees with the expected patterns. The results show that developmental rate and its temperature-dependent parameters are similar in closely related s

SUBMITTER: Kutcherov D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4979698 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature