PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 157: Climate Dynamics: Temperature Effects; Modeling
Friday, August 12, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 516 D, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Climate Change Will Have Larger Impacts at Low Latitudes.

Sheldon, Kimberly^*,1, Tewksbury, Josh¹, Deutch, Curtis¹, Ghalambor, Cameron², Huey, Ray¹, Haak, David¹, ¹ University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA² Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

ABSTRACT- Recent global warming has altered species distributions, phenology, and persistence. The impact of future warming on species persistence has been difficult to predict, but projections place the largest impacts at higher latitudes, as temperature changes are predicted to be larger there, and most organismal responses have been detected at high-latitudes. These predictions may be misleading, as they do not account for organismal tolerance to climate change. We show that the abilities of plants, insects, lizards, frogs, and mammals to tolerate changes in temperature are directly related to the range in temperature these organisms experience (seasonality). Projecting this relationship globally, organismal tolerance to temperature change is much lower in equatorial regions, where seasonal variation in climate is minimal, and thus even with greater temperature changes at high latitudes, the impact of climate change should be greater in equatorial regions, where the majority of diversity is located. This prediction is robust to differences in organismal sensitivity to seasonality and the rate of evolutionary response. Thus greater tolerance predicts more phenotypic responses to climate change at high-latitude, as previously observed, but species persistence is more likely to be affected at low-latitudes.

Key words: climate change, physiological tolerance, latitude