Plasticity cannot fully compensate evolutionary differences in heat tolerance across fish species.

Understanding how evolution and phenotypic plasticity contribute to variation in heat tolerance is crucial to predicting responses to warming. Here, we analyze 272 thermal death time curves of 53 fish species acclimated to different temperatures and quantify their relative contributions. Analyses show that evolution and plasticity account, respectively, for 80.

Heat tolerance of marine ectotherms in a warming Antarctica.

Global warming is affecting the Antarctic continent in complex ways. Because Antarctic organisms are specialized to living in the cold, they are vulnerable to increasing temperatures, although quantitative analyses of this issue are currently lacking. Here we compiled a total of 184 estimates of heat tolerance belonging to 39 marine species and quantified how survival is affected concomitantly by the intensity and duration of thermal stress.

Thermal effects vary predictably across levels of organization: empirical results and theoretical basis.

Thermal performance curves have provided a common framework to study the impact of temperature in biological systems. However, few generalities have emerged to date. Here, we combine an experimental approach with theoretical analyses to demonstrate that performance curves are expected to vary predictably with the levels of biological organization.