Evolution of geographic variation in thermal performance curves in the face of climate change and implications for biotic interactions.

Abstract

We review the recent literature on geographic variation in insect thermal performance curves (TPCs). Despite strong thermal differences, there is often no change in TPCs across geographic gradients. When shifts occur, these are mostly vertical (indicating an overall shift in performance across temperatures, that is, countergradient or cogradient variation) and less horizontal (reflecting thermal adaptation). Based on this, using a space-for-time substitution approach, we generated likely evolutionary scenarios of TPC evolution to simulate the outcome of biotic interactions under future warming. We illustrate how taking evolution of the TPCs into account may strongly impact the predicted outcome of biotic interactions under climate warming. Importantly, both the type and the magnitude of the TPC shift was identified to be crucial to determine who will be winners and losers of biotic interactions.