Untangling the roles of microclimate, behaviour and physiological polymorphism in governing vulnerability of intertidal snails to heat stress.

Biogeographic distributions are driven by cumulative effects of smaller scale processes. Thus, vulnerability of animals to thermal stress is the result of physiological sensitivities to body temperature (), microclimatic conditions, and behavioural thermoregulation. To understand interactions among these variables, we analysed the thermal tolerances of three species of intertidal snails from different latitudes along the Chinese coast, and estimated potential in different microhabitats at each site.