Life Sciences Commons^™

Is Climate Change Causing The Range Contraction Of Cape Rock-Jumpers (Chaetops Frenatus)?, Gregory D. Duckworth, Raquel A. Garcia, Rheinhardt Scholtz, Res Altwegg

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Species distribution models often suggest strong links between climate and species' distribution boundaries and project large distribution shifts in response to climate change. However, attributing distribution shifts to climate change requires more than correlative models. One idea is to examine correlates of the processes that cause distribution shifts, namely colonization and local extinction, by using dynamic occupancy models. The Cape Rock-jumper (Chaetops frenatus) has disappeared over most of its distribution where temperatures are the highest. We used dynamic occupancy models to analyse Cape Rock-jumper distribution with respect to climate (mean temperature and precipitation over the warmest annual quarter), …

Agricultural Research Service Weed Science Research: Past, Present, And Future, Stephen L. Young, James V. Anderson, Scott R. Baerson, Joanna Bajsa-Hirschel, Dana M. Blumenthal, Chad S. Boyd, Clyde D. Boyette, Eric B. Brennan, Charles L. Cantrell, Wun S. Chao, Joanne C. Chee-Sanford, Charlie D. Clements, F. Allen Dray, Stephen O. Duke, Kayla M. Eason, Reginald S. Fletcher, Michael R. Fulcher, Brenda J. Grewell, Erik P. Hamerlynck, Robert E. Hoagland, David P. Horvath, Eugene P. Law, Daniel E. Martin, Clint Mattox, Steven B. Mirsky, Patrick J. Moran, Rebecca C. Mueller, Vijay K. Nandula, Beth A. Newingham, Zhiqiang Pan, Lauren M. Porensky, Paul D. Pratt, Andrew J. Price, Brian G. Rector, Krishna N. Reddy, Roger L. Sheley, Lincoln Smith, Melissa C. Smith, Keirith A. Snyder, Matthew A. Tancos

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

The U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) has been a leader in weed science research covering topics ranging from the development and use of integrated weed management (IWM) tactics to basic mechanistic studies, including biotic resistance of desirable plant communities and herbicide resistance. ARS weed scientists have worked in agricultural and natural ecosystems, including agronomic and horticultural crops, pastures, forests, wild lands, aquatic habitats, wetlands, and riparian areas. Through strong partnerships with academia, state agencies, private industry, and numerous federal programs, ARS weed scientists have made contributions to discoveries in the newest fields of robotics and genetics, as well …

Plant Species’ Capacity For Range Shifts At The Habitat And Geographic Scales: A Trade-Off-Based Framework, Bailey H. Mcnichol, Sabrina E. Russo

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Climate change is causing rapid shifts in the abiotic and biotic environmental conditions experienced by plant populations, but we lack generalizable frameworks for predicting the consequences for species. These changes may cause individuals to become poorly matched to their environments, potentially inducing shifts in the distributions of populations and altering species’ habitat and geographic ranges. We present a trade-off-based framework for understanding and predicting whether plant species may undergo range shifts, based on ecological strategies defined by functional trait variation. We define a species’ capacity for undergoing range shifts as the product of its colonization ability and the ability to …

Optimal Stomatal Theory Predicts Co2 Responses Of Stomatal Conductance In Both Gymnosperm And Angiosperm Trees, Anna Gardner, Mingkai Jiang, David S. Ellsworth, A. Robert Mackenzie, Jeremy Pritchard, Martin Karl Friedrich Bader, Craig V.M. Barton, Carl Bernacchi, Carlo Calfapietra, Kristine Y. Crous, Mirindi Eric Dusenge, Teresa E. Gimeno, Marianne Hall, Shubhangi Lamba, Sebastian Leuzinger, Johan Uddling, Jeffrey Warren, Göran Wallin, Belinda E. Medlyn

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Optimal stomatal theory predicts that stomata operate to maximise photosynthesis (Anet) and minimise transpirational water loss to achieve optimal intrinsic water-use efficiency (iWUE). We tested whether this theory can predict stomatal responses to elevated atmospheric CO2 (eCO2), and whether it can capture differences in responsiveness among woody plant functional types (PFTs). We conducted a meta-analysis of tree studies of the effect of eCO2 on iWUE and its components Anet and stomatal conductance (gs). We compared three PFTs, using the unified stomatal optimisation (USO) model to account for confounding effects of leaf–air vapour pressure difference (D). We expected smaller gs, but …

Insect And Pest Management For Sustaining Crop Production Under Changing Climatic Patterns Of Drylands, Ruchika Kashyap, Sajjan Grover, Heena Puri, Sandeep Kaur, Jagmohan Singh, Karansher S. Sandhu, Gagandeep Kaur, Hinal Kharva, Shivreet Kaur, Balwinder Kaur

Department of Entomology: Faculty Publications

Climate change is alarming, particularly for agriculturists as it severely impacts the development, distribution, and survival of insects and pests, affecting crop production globally. Over time, climate change is drastically tumbling the crop productivity in all the cropping systems, whereas the dryland agriculture with existing low productivity is immensely hit. While all the existing species in drylands, including humans, are coping with extreme climate variations for millennia, future climate change predictions put dryland agriculture in a threat zone. Drylands support 38% of the world’s population; therefore, climate change coupled with population growth and global food security draws the attention of …

High Winds And Melting Sea Ice Trigger Landward Movement In A Polar Bear Population Of Concern, Annie Kellner, Todd C. Atwood, David C. Douglas, Stewart W. Breck, Colorado State University - Fort Collins

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Some animal species are responding to climate change by altering the timing of events like mating and migration. Such behavioral plasticity can be adaptive, but it is not always. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) from the southern Beaufort Sea subpopulation have mostly remained on ice year-round, but as the climate warms and summer sea ice declines, a growing proportion of the subpopulation is summering ashore. The triggers of this novel behavior are not well understood. Our study uses a parametric time-to-event model to test whether biological and/or time-varying environmental variables thought to influence polar bear movement and habitat selection …

Bison Movements Change With Weather: Implications For Their Continued Conservation In The Anthropocene, Nicholas A. Mcmillan, Samuel D. Fuhlendorf, Barney Luttbeg, Laura E. Goodman, Craig A. Davis, Brady W. Allred, Robert G. Hamilton

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Animal movement patterns are affected by complex interactions between biotic and abiotic landscape conditions, and these patterns are being altered by weather variability associated with a changing climate. Some animals, like the American plains bison (Bison bison L.; hereafter, plains bison), are considered keystone species, thus their response to weather variability may alter ecosystem structure and biodiversity patterns. Many movement studies of plains bison and other ungulates have focused on point-pattern analyses (e.g., resource-selection) that have provided information about where these animals move, but information about when or why these animals move is limited. For example, information surrounding the …

The Stockholm Paradigm: Lessons For The Emerging Infectious Disease Crisis, Daniel R. Brooks, Walter A. Boeger, Eric P. Hoberg

MANTER: Journal of Parasite Biodiversity

The emerging infectious disease (EID) crisis represents an immediate existential threat to modern humanity. Current policies aimed at coping with the EID crisis are ineffective and unsustainably expensive. They have failed because they are based on a scientific paradigm that produced the parasite paradox. The Stockholm paradigm (SP) resolves the paradox by integrating four elements of evolutionary biology: ecological fitting, sloppy fitness space, coevolution, and responses to environmental perturbations. It explains why and how the EID crisis occurs and is expanding and what happens after an EID emerges that sets the stage for future EIDs. The SP provides a number …

Temperature Has A Unimodal Effect On The Functional Response Of Wolf Spiders, John Delong, Stella F. Uiterwaal, Alondra Magallanes

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

The response of biotic interactions to changes in temperature will play a large role in determining the impact of climate change on ecological communities. In particular, how warming alters predator-prey interactions will influence population stability, food web connectivity, and the movement of energy across trophic levels. The functional response relates predator foraging rates to prey availability, and it is often predicted to increase monotonically with temperature, at least within the limits of predator function. However, some studies suggest that functional responses peak and then decline, and such a difference has critical implications for the effect of warming on ecological communities. …

Climate Change And Management Impacts On Soybean N Fixation, Soil N Mineralization, N2O Emissions, And Seed Yield, Elvis F. Elli, Ignacio A. Ciampitti, Michael J. Castellano, Larry C. Purcell, Seth Naeve, Patricio Grassini, Nicolas C. La Menza, Luiz Moro Rosso, André F. De Borja Reis, Péter Kovács, Sotirios V. Archontoulis

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Limited knowledge about how nitrogen (N) dynamics are affected by climate change, weather variability, and crop management is a major barrier to improving the productivity and environmental performance of soybean-based cropping systems. To fill this knowledge gap, we created a systems understanding of agroecosystem N dynamics and quantified the impact of controllable (management) and uncontrollable (weather, climate) factors on N fluxes and soybean yields. We performed a simulation experiment across 10 soybean production environments in the United States using the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM) model and future climate projections from five global circulation models. Climate change (2020–2080) increased N …

The First Report Of Lissomus Dalman (Coleoptera: Elateridae: Lissominae) From The Greater Antilles, With Two New Species From The Dominican Republic, Paul J. Johnson

Insecta Mundi

Lissomus quisqueya new species and L. woodruffi new species are described. Both species are reported from the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola. These are the first species of Lissomus Dalman reported from the Greater Antilles. Lissomus quisqueya is recorded from montane mesic forests in the Cordillera Central from Dajadon and La Vega provinces. Lissomus woodruffi is recorded from Barahona, Independencia and Pedernales provinces from montane mesic forest in the Sierra de Bahoruco. Morphologically, these species are most similar to members of the L. discedens Bonvouloir species group from Mesoamerica and South America. Known sites of occurrence of L. …

Drought Imprints On Crops Can Reduce Yield Loss: Nature's Insights For Food Security, Peng Fu, Deepak Jaiswal, Justin M. Mcgrath, Shaowen Wang, Stephen P. Long, Carl J. Bernacchi

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

The Midwestern “Corn-Belt” in the United States is the most productive agricultural region on the planet despite being predominantly rainfed. In this region, global climate change is driving precipitation patterns toward wetter springs and drier mid- to late-summers, a trend that is likely to intensify in the future. The lack of precipitation can lead to crop water limitations that ultimately impact growth and yields. Young plants exposed to water stress will often invest more resources into their root systems, possibly priming the crop for any subsequent mid- or late-season drought. The trend toward wetter springs, however, suggests that opportunities for …

The Last Continuous Grasslands On Earth: Identification And Conservation Importance, Rheinhardt Scholtz, Dirac L. Twidwell Jr

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Grasslands are the most threatened and least protected biome. Yet, no study has been conducted to identify the last remaining continuous grasslands on Earth. Here, we used World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifications to measure the degree of intactness remaining for the world's grassland ecoregions. This analysis revealed three findings of critical conservation importance. First, only a few large, intact grasslands remain. Second, every continent with a grassland ecoregion considered in this study contains at least one relatively intact grassland ecoregion. Third, the largest remaining continuous grasslands identified in this analysis have persisted …

Plague Risk In The Western United States Over Seven Decades Of Environmental Change, Colin J. Carlson, Sarah N. Bevins, Boris V. Schmid

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

After several pandemics over the last two millennia, the wildlife reservoirs of plague (Yersinia pestis) now persist around the world, including in the western United States. Routine surveillance in this region has generated comprehensive records of human cases and animal seroprevalence, creating a unique opportunity to test how plague reservoirs are responding to environmental change. Here, we test whether animal and human data suggest that plague reservoirs and spillover risk have shifted since 1950. To do so, we develop a new method for detecting the impact of climate change on infectious disease distributions, capable of disentangling long-term trends (signal) and …

Inflammatory Mediation Of Heat Stress-Induced Growth Deficits In Livestock And Its Potential Role As A Target For Nutritional Interventions: A Review, Micah S. Most, Dustin T. Yates

Department of Animal Science: Faculty Publications

Heat stress is detrimental to well-being and growth performance in livestock, and systemic inflammation arising during chronic heat stress contributes to these poor outcomes. Sustained exposure of muscle and other tissues to inflammation can impair the cellular processes that facilitate muscle growth and intramuscular fat deposition, thus reducing carcass quality and yield. Climate change is expected to produce more frequent extreme heat events, increasing the potential impact of heat stress on sustainable livestock production. Feedlot animals are at particularly high risk for heat stress, as confinement limits their ability to seek cooling from the shade, water, or breeze. Economically practical …

A Review Of Transformative Strategies For Climate Mitigation By Grasslands, Nuria Gomez-Casanovas, Elena Blanc-Betes, Caitlin E. Moore, Carl J. Bernacchi, Ilsa Kantola, Evan H. Delucia

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Grasslands can significantly contribute to climate mitigation. However, recent trends indicate that human activities have switched their net cooling effect to a warming effect due to management intensification and land conversion. This indicates an urgent need for strategies directed to mitigate climate warming while enhancing productivity and efficiency in the use of land and natural (nutrients, water) resources. Here, we examine the potential of four innovative strategies to slow climate change including: 1) Adaptive multi-paddock grazing that consists of mimicking how ancestral herds roamed the Earth; 2) Agrivoltaics that consists of simultaneously producing food and energy from solar panels on …

Satellite-Detected Ammonia Changes In The United States: Natural Or Anthropogenic Impacts, Yaqian He, Rongting Xu, Stephen A. Prior, Di Yang, Anni Yang, Jian Chen

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Ammonia (NH3) is the most abundant alkaline component and can react with atmospheric acidic species to form aerosols that can lead to numerous environmental and health issues. Increasing atmospheric NH3 over agricultural regions in the US has been documented. However, spatiotemporal changes of NH3 concentrations over the entire US are still not thoroughly understood, and the factors that drive these changes remain unknown. Herein, we applied the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) monthly NH3 dataset to explore spatiotemporal changes in atmospheric NH3 and the empirical relationships with synthetic N fertilizer application, livestock manure production, and climate factors across the entire US …

An Environmental Assessment Of Cattle Manure And Urea Fertilizer Treatments For Corn Production In The Northern Great Plains, C. Alan Rotz, Senorpe Asem-Hiablie, Erin Cortus, Mindy J. Spiehs, Shafiqur Rahman, Anne Stoner

Roman L. Hruska U.S. Meat Animal Research Center: Reports

Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and carbon (C) emissions from livestock systems have become important regional, national, and international concerns. Our objective was to use process-level simulation to explore differences among manure and inorganic fertilizer treatments in a corn production system used to feed finishing cattle in the Northern Great Plains region of the U.S. Our analysis included model assessment, simulation to compare treatments under recent climate, and comparisons using projected midcentury climate. The Integrated Farm System Model was evaluated in representing the performance and nutrient losses of corn production using cattle manure without bedding, manure with bedding, urea, and no …

Statement Of World Aquatic Scientific Societies On The Need To Take Urgent Action Against Human-Caused Climate Change, Based On Scientific Evidence [Dear Colleague Letter], Scott A. Bonar, Brian R. Murphy, Leanne H. Roulson, Jesse T. Trushenski, Douglas J. Austen, Michael Edward Douglas

United States Fish and Wildlife: Staff Publications

Dear Colleague Letter from the American Fisheries Society to fellow scientific societies, July 25, 2020, about the urgent need for responsive collective action to mitigate impending radical climate change. Includes the Statement of World Aquatic Scientific Societies on the Need to Take Urgent Action Against Human-Caused Climate Change, Based on Scientific Evidence, emphasizing the importance of aquatic ecosystems. Includes extensive citations and notes.

"Water is the most important natural resource on Earth as it is vital for life. Aquatic ecosystems, freshwater or marine, provide multiple benefits to human society, such as provisioning of oxygen, food, drinking water, genetic resources; regulation …

Local Adaptation Constrains Drought Tolerance In A Tropical Foundation Tree, Kasey E. Barton, Casey Jones, Kyle F. Edwards, Aaron B. Shiels, Tiffany Knight

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

1. Plant species with broad climatic ranges might be more vulnerable to climate change than previously appreciated due to intraspecific variation in climatic stress tolerance. In tropical forests, drought is increasingly frequent and severe, causing widespread declines and altering community dynamics. Yet, little is known about whether foundation tropical trees vary in drought tolerance throughout their distributions, and how intraspecific variation in drought tolerance might contribute to their vulnerability to climate changE.
2. We tested for local adaptation in seedling emergence and establishment with a full-factorial reciprocal transplant experiment including 27 populations and 109,350 seeds along a 3,500 mm precipitation gradient for …

Sharp‐Tailed Grouse In The Nebraska Sandhills Select Residual Cover Patches For Nest Sites, William L. Vodehnal, Gregory L. Schenbeck, Daniel W, Uresk

Nebraska Game and Parks Commission: Staff Research Publications

We evaluated selection and availability of residual cover (dead standing herbage) by sharptailed grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus) at time of nest‐site selection in an intact and annually grazed grassland. We used radiotelemetry in 1988–1990 to locate 147 nests in the sandhills of Nebraska, USA, and classified 121 as initial nests and 26 as renests. We used visual obstruction readings (VOR) to measure the height and density of residual cover at nests and 373 landscape‐scale transects around leks (trap sites). We excluded 77 nests from vegetation analysis because green herbage or early livestock grazing compromised residual cover measurements. Most females …

Assessing The Hierarchy Of Long-Term Environmental Controls On Diatom Communities Of Yellowstone National Park Using Lacustrine Sediment Records, Victoria Chraibi, Sherilyn C. Fritz

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

An ecosystem’s ability to maintain structure and function following disturbance, defined as resilience, is influenced by a hierarchy of environmental controls, including climate, surface cover, and ecological relationships that shape biological community composition and productivity. This study examined lacustrine sediment records of naturally fishless lakes in Yellowstone National Park to reconstruct the response of aquatic communities to climate and trophic cascades from fish stocking. Sediment records of diatom algae did not exhibit a distinct response to fish stocking in terms of assemblage or algal productivity. Instead, 3 of 4 lakes underwent a shift to dominance by benthic diatom species from …

Patterns And Potential Causes Of Changing Winter Bird Distributions In South Dakota, David L. Swanson, Reza Goljani Amirkhiz, Mark D. Dixon

The Prairie Naturalist

Average winter temperatures in the north-central United States have been increasing since the 1970s, and this warming might influence winter distributions of birds in the region. Species potentially influenced by such winter warming include short-distance migrants for which the northern boundary of the winter range is influenced by temperature, such as hermit thrush (Catharus guttatus), yellow-rumped warbler (Setophaga coronata), and fox sparrow (Passerella iliaca). We examined winter records during 1974–2017 from a citizen-science bird observation database for South Dakota to determine recent trends in winter records for these three species. We compared their occurrence patterns with those for three benchmark …

Trade-Offs Between Morphology And Thermal Niches Mediate Adaptation In Response To Competing Selective Pressures, Stella F. Uiterwaal, Ian T. Lagerstrom, Thomas M. Luhring, Miranda E. Salsbery, John P. Delong

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

The effects of climate change—such as increased temperature variability and novel predators—rarely happen in isolation, but it is unclear how organisms cope with mul- tiple stressors simultaneously. To explore this, we grew replicate Paramecium caudatum populations in either constant or variable temperatures and exposed half to predation. We then fit thermal performance curves (TPCs) of intrinsic growth rate (r_max) for each replicate population (N = 12) across seven temperatures (10°C–38°C). TPCs of P. caudatum exposed to both temperature variability and predation re- sponded only to one or the other (but not both), resulting in unpredictable outcomes. …

Temperature Alters The Shape Of Predator–Prey Cycles Through Effects On Underlying Mechanisms, John P. Delong, Shelby Lyon

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Background: Predicting the effects of climate warming on the dynamics of ecological systems requires understanding how temperature influences birth rates, death rates and the strength of species interactions. The temperature dependance of these processes—which are the underlying mechanisms of ecological dynamics—is often thought to be exponential or unimodal, generally supported by short-term experiments. However, ecological dynamics unfold over many generations. Our goal was to empirically document shifts in predator–prey cycles over the full range of temperatures that can possibly support a predator–prey system and then to uncover the effect of temperature on the underlying mechanisms driving those changes.

Methods: We …

Trade-Offs Between Morphology And Thermal Niches Mediate Adaptation In Response To Competing Selective Pressures, Stella F. Uiterwaal, Ian T. Lagerstrom, Thomas M. Luhring, Miranda E. Salsbery, John P. Delong

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Abstract

The effects of climate change—such as increased temperature variability and novel predators—rarely happen in isolation, but it is unclear how organisms cope with multiple stressors simultaneously. To explore this, we grew replicate Paramecium caudatum populations in either constant or variable temperatures and exposed half to predation. We then fit thermal performance curves (TPCs) of intrinsic growth rate (r_max) for each replicate population (N = 12) across seven temperatures (10°C–38°C). TPCs of P. caudatum exposed to both temperature variability and predation responded only to one or the other (but not both), resulting in unpredictable outcomes. These changes in …

Solar Dimming Decreased Maize Yield Potential On The North China Plain, Qingfeng Meng, Baohua Liu, Haishun Yang, Xinping Chen

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Solar dimming has been increasing in rapidly developing regions (China and India) and threatening food security. Although previous studies have summarized the ef- fects of climate change-associated increases in temperature on agriculture, few have examined the effects due to solar dimming. Here, we analyzed the effects of solar dimming on maize on the North China Plain (NCP). It is reported that solar dimming intensified and maize yield potential decreased since the 1960s. The total decrease in solar radiation for the whole maize growing season of this period was 17%, and solar dimming explained 87% of the decrease in yield potential. …

Changes In The Diet And Body Size Of A Small Herbivorous Mammal (Hispid Cotton Rat, Sigmodon Hispidus) Following The Late Pleistocene Megafauna Extinction, Catalina P. Tomé, Emma A. Elliott Smith, S. Kathleen Lyons, Seth D. Newsome, Felisa A. Smith

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

The catastrophic loss of large-bodied mammals during the terminal Pleistocene likely led to cascading effects within communities. While the extinction of the top consumers probably expanded the resources available to survivors of all body sizes, little work has focused on the responses of the smallest mammals. Here, we use a detailed fossil record from the southwestern United States to examine the response of the hispid cotton rat Sigmodon hispidus to biodiversity loss and climatic change over the late Quaternary. In particular, we focus on changes in diet and body size. We characterize diet through carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen …

Phenotypically Plastic Responses To Predation Risk Are Temperature Dependent, Thomas M. Luhring, Janna M. Vavra, Clayton E. Cressler, John Delong

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Predicting how organisms respond to climate change requires that we understand the temperature dependence of fitness in relevant ecological contexts (e.g., with or without predation risk). Predation risk often induces changes to life history traits that are themselves temperature dependent. We explore how perceived predation risk and temperature interact to determine fitness (indicated by the intrinsic rate of increase, r) through changes to its underlying components (net reproductive rate, generation time, and survival) in Daphnia magna. We exposed Daphnia to predation cues from dragonfly naiads early, late, or throughout their ontogeny. Predation risk increased r differentially across temperatures …

Opportunities For Behavioral Rescue Under Rapid Environmental Change, Samuel B. Fey, David A. Vasseur, Karla Alujević, Kristy J. Kroeker, Michael L. Logan, Mary I. O'Connor, Volker H.W. Rudolf, John Delong, Scott Peacor, Rebecca L. Selden, A Sih, Susana Clusella‐Trullas

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Laboratory measurements of physiological and demographic tolerances are important in understanding the impact of climate change on species diversity; however, it has been recognized that forecasts based solely on these laboratory estimates overestimate risk by omitting the capacity for species to utilize microclimatic variation via behavioral adjustments in activity patterns or habitat choice. The complex, and often context‐dependent nature, of microclimate utilization has been an impediment to the advancement of general predictive models. Here, we overcome this impediment and estimate the potential impact of warming on the fitness of ectotherms using a benefit/cost trade‐off derived from the simple and broadly …