The thermal breadth of temperate and tropical freshwater insects supports the climate variability hypothesis

Climate change involves increases in mean temperature and changes in temperature variability at multiple temporal scales but research rarely considers these temporal scales. The Climate Variability Hypothesis (CVH) provides a conceptual framework for exploring the potential effects of annual scale thermal variability across climatic zones. The CVH predicts ectotherms in temperate regions tolerate a wider range of temperatures than those in tropical regions in response to greater annual variability in temperate regions. However, various other aspects of thermal regimes (e.g., diel variability), organisms’ size, and taxonomic identity are also hypothesised to influence thermal tolerance. Indeed, high temperatures in the tropics have been proposed as constraining organisms’ ability to tolerate a wide range of temperatures, implying that high annual maximum temperatures would be associated with tolerating a narrow range of temperatures. We measured thermal regimes and critical thermal limit...,  
 , , # The thermal breadth of temperate and tropical freshwater insects supports the climate variability hypothesis

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.9cnp5hqs1](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.9cnp5hqs1)

**Primary article citation:** Dewenter, B. S., et al. (2024). \"The thermal breadth of temperate and tropical freshwater insects supports the climate variability hypothesis.\" Ecology and Evolution 14(2): e10937. DOI: 10.1002/ece3.10937.

**Overview:** The data consists of three thermal traits: critical thermal maximum (CTmax), critical thermal minimum (CTmin), and thermal breadth (TB) of freshwater insect species from two elevation gradients in temperate eastern Australia (southern New South Wales, NSW) and tropical eastern Australia (northern Queensland, QLD). Also included are the associated measures of the thermal regimes at the sites where the freshwater insects were collected. TB = CTmax - CTmin. Also reported are the size of the insects in terms of their head width (mm) and their taxonomy,...