new paper on measuring thermal sensitivity
Check out our new paper in The American Naturalist on Real versus Artificial Variation in the Thermal Sensitivity of Biological Traits. Our key result is that because thermal sensitivity is not always strictly exponential, significant biases in its estimation can arise from an inappropriate choice of experimental temperatures. That is, choosing experimental temperature ranges at the cold end of an organism’s tolerance range tends to yield high estimates of sensitivity, and choosing ranges at the warm end yields low estimates. We provide a number of guidelines for accurately measuring thermal sensitivity and for correctly using thermal sensitivity data to model effects of climate change on species and ecosystems.
You can find a pdf of this paper on our PUBLICATIONS page.