Low acclimation capacity of narrow-ranging thermal specialists exposes susceptibility to global climate change.

ABSTRACT: Thermal acclimation is hypothesized to offer a selective advantage in seasonal habitats and may underlie disparities in geographic range size among closely-related species with similar ecologies. Understanding this relationship is also critical for identifying species that are more sensitive to warming climates. Here, we study North American plethodontid salamanders to investigate whether acclimation ability is associated with species' latitudinal extents and the thermal range of the environments they inhabit. We quantified variation in thermal physiology by measuring standard metabolic rate (SMR) at different test and acclimation temperatures for 16 species of salamanders with varying latitudinal extents. A phylogenetically-controlled Markov chain Monte Carlo generalized linear mixed mode

SUBMITTER: Markle TM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5938462 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature