Hyperkalaemia, not apoptosis, accurately predicts insect chilling injury.

There is a growing appreciation that insect distribution and abundance are associated with the limits of thermal tolerance, but the physiology underlying thermal tolerance remains poorly understood. Many insects, like the migratory locust (), suffer a loss of ion and water balance leading to hyperkalaemia (high extracellular [K]) in the cold that indirectly causes cell death. Cells can die in several ways under stress, and how they die is of critical importance to identifying and understanding the nature of thermal adaptation.