Macroecology & Macrophysiology
We use regional to global-scale trait-based approaches to explore vulnerabilities of ectothermic species to climate change. For example, we examined the potential for species life history traits to explain the magnitude of phenological change in UK butterflies under recent climate change. We have also examined the potential for ant thermal tolerances and the temperature of the environments they inhabit to develop predictions of relative vulnerability to future warming. Like many macrophysiological studies in ectothermic species, we found tropical ants to be most susceptible to climate change.
Field-based experimental manipulations of climate
We use the patterns from the large-scale approaches to inform our field-based manipulations of climate. We examined the potential for thermal tolerance to predict the responses of many species of ants to experimental climatic warming in two large-scale experimental arrays, positioned at the northern and southern boundaries of temperate hardwood forests in eastern North America. We found that ants with higher thermal tolerances had greater activity densities in warmer chambers. This pattern held for the southern array, but not the northern array, supporting the findings of the global analysis showing ants inhabiting lower latitude environments to be more at risk from climate warming.
Lab-based experimental manipulations of climate
We use laboratory experiments in environmental growth chambers to explore the impacts of finer-scale variation in temperature on insects throughout ontogeny. Our projects in this area focus on the impacts of asymmetric diurnal warming and winter warming on butterflies.