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Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Survival At The Summits: Amphibian Responses To Thermal Extremes, Disease, And Rapid Climate Change In The High Tropical Andes, Kelsey E. Reider
Survival At The Summits: Amphibian Responses To Thermal Extremes, Disease, And Rapid Climate Change In The High Tropical Andes, Kelsey E. Reider
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Understanding biological responses to climate change is a primary concern in conservation biology. Of the ecosystems being rapidly impacted by climate change, those in the high-elevation tropics are among the most poorly studied. The tropical Andean biosphere includes record elevations above 5000 meters, where extreme environmental conditions challenge many organisms. In the Cordillera Vilcanota of southern Peru, frogs including Pleurodema marmoratum and Telmatobius marmoratus have expanded their ranges to 5244 – 5400 m into habitats created by glacial recession, making them among the highest recorded amphibians on Earth. To understand how hydrologic alterations from loss of glacial meltwater and climatic …
The Effects Of Climate Warming On Plant-Herbivore Interactions, Nathan Lemoine
The Effects Of Climate Warming On Plant-Herbivore Interactions, Nathan Lemoine
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Rising temperatures associated with climate change will alter the fundamental physiological processes of most ectothermic species. Drastic changes in catabolic and anabolic reaction rates exert strong effects on growth, reproduction, and consumption rates that cascade up through all levels of the biological hierarchy. This dissertation determined how climate warming might alter the important relationship between plants and insect herbivores, as mediated through changes in herbivore physiology. Consumption and fitness increased with temperature for almost all consumers. However, all consumers also exhibited a critical temperature, beyond which consumption declined rapidly through metabolism continued to increase. This mismatch in metabolic demands and …