The influence of thermal tolerances on geographical ranges of endotherms

Abstract

AbstractAimTo understand how climatic conditions influence the geographical distributions of species and their potential responses to climate change, we investigated the relationships between the thermal tolerances of species and the size and limits of their distributions. We tested two hypotheses for endotherms: the climatic variability hypothesis, which predicts increases in range size with increasing breadth of thermal tolerance, and the climatic extreme hypothesis, which predicts that range limits are related to thermal tolerance limits. Furthermore, we tested whether these relationships differ between temperate and tropical areas.LocationGlobal.Time periodPresent.Major taxa studiedBirds and mammals.MethodsWe compiled data on thermal tolerances that had been measured in physiological experiments for 453 endothermic species, along with information on geographical ranges and climatic conditions. We applied phylogenetic generalized least square regressions to test for relationships between thermal tolerance and (a) range size or limits and (b) breadth and extremes of the climatic conditions that each species experiences across its distribution.ResultsWe found that range size was not related to the breadth thermal tolerance for endotherms. However, the range limits at high latitudes as well as the minimum temperatures experienced by species were closely related to the physiological cold tolerances of species. These relationships were particularly strong in temperate regions, but these patterns were not found in the tropics.Main conclusionsOur results are inconsistent with the predictions of the climatic variability hypothesis, but are in line with the predictions of the climatic extreme hypothesis. Furthermore, the factors determining species distributions do not appear to be the same in tropical and temperate regions. Our study emphasizes the need to combine spatially explicit distribution models with information from physiological experiments in order to capture regional differences and improve predictions of the responses of species to climate change.