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Biophysics, Environmental Stochasticity, And The Evolution Of Thermal Safety Margins In Intertidal Limpets, W. Wesley Dowd, M. W. Denny

Biology Faculty Works

As the air temperature of the Earth rises, ecological relationships within a community might shift, in part due to differences in the thermal physiology of species. Prediction of these shifts – an urgent task for ecologists – will be complicated if thermal tolerance itself can rapidly evolve. Here, we employ a mechanistic approach to predict the potential for rapid evolution of thermal tolerance in the intertidal limpet Lottia gigantea. Using biophysical principles to predict body temperature as a function of the state of the environment, and an environmental bootstrap procedure to predict how the environment fluctuates through time, we create …