Subject collection: Ecophysiology: responses to environmental stressors and change
- Climate change and invasive species: a physiological performance comparison of invasive and endemic bees in Fiji
Highlighted Article: Invasive bees in Fiji have greater thermal tolerance and are more desiccation resistant than the only native bee in lowland Fiji. Plant–pollinator relationships might shift with continued climate warming.
- High light alongside elevated PCO2 alleviates thermal depression of photosynthesis in a hard coral (Pocillopora acuta)
Summary: Ocean chemistry, light and temperature are changing under climate change. These changes have a synergistic impact on metabolic processes involved in energy acquisition in a coral–algal symbiosis.
- Life stages differ in plasticity to temperature fluctuations and uniquely contribute to adult phenotype in Onthophagus taurus dung beetles
Summary: Life stages differ in thermal plasticity to increased temperature fluctuations, which may affect how some organisms fare under a warming climate.
- The functional significance of panting as a mechanism of thermoregulation and its relationship to the critical thermal maxima in lizards
Highlighted Article: Many lizard species can depress body temperature below air temperature via panting and evaporative cooling. This capacity varies greatly among species and the initiation of panting provides a modest, but not definitive estimate of an animal’s critical thermal maxima.
- Paracellular transport to the coral calcifying medium: effects of environmental parameters
Summary: Paracellular transport in S. pistillata was investigated using calcein imaging. Changes in paracellular permeability could form an uncharacterised aspect of the physiological response of S. pistillata to seawater acidification.
- Thermal acclimation offsets the negative effects of nitrate on aerobic scope and performance
Summary: Nitrate exposure increases the susceptibility of fish to acute changes in temperature by lowering aerobic scope and performance, but thermal phenotypic plasticity can override these potentially detrimental effects.
- Thermal tolerance and hypoxia tolerance are associated in blacktip reef shark (Carcharhinus melanopterus) neonates
Summary: Thermal tolerance is associated with hypoxia tolerance in blacktip reef shark (Carcharhinus melanopterus) neonates. Both tolerance traits change with thermal acclimation, but aerobic scope and growth rates do not.
- Mussel acclimatization to high, variable temperatures is lost slowly upon transfer to benign conditions
Summary: Acclimatization to high, variable temperatures is lost slowly with constant submersion, potentially facilitating animals’ survival during intermittent stressful thermal events. Previous acclimatization state influences the changes observed with constant submersion.
- Impact of temperature on bite force and bite endurance in the leopard iguana (Diplolaemus leopardinus) in the Andes Mountains
Summary: Leopard iguanas bite during prey capture, defense, sexual competition and copulation. Experimental data show they would maintain or improve bite performance at the higher temperatures projected in climate-change scenarios.
- Oxygen supply capacity in animals evolves to meet maximum demand at the current oxygen partial pressure regardless of size or temperature
Summary: Maximum and basal metabolic rate and their oxygen, temperature and size dependencies are mechanistically and quantifiably linked via the physiological capacity to supply oxygen.