Quantifying thermal extremes and biological variation to predict evolutionary responses to changing climate

Central ideas from thermal biology, including thermal performance curves and tolerances, have been widely used to evaluate how changes in environmental means and variances generate changes in fitness, selection and microevolution in response to climate change. We summarize the opportunities and challenges for extending this approach to understanding the consequences of extreme climatic events. Using statistical tools from extreme value theory, we show how distributions of thermal extremes vary with latitude, time scale and climate change. Second, we review how performance curves and tolerances have been used to predict the fitness and evolutionary responses to climate change and climate gradients. Performance curves and tolerances change with prior thermal history and with time scale, complicating their use for predicting responses to thermal extremes. Third, we describe several recent case studies showing how infrequent extreme events can have outsized effects on the evolution of perfo...热生物学领域的核心理论，包括热性能曲线（thermal performance curves）与热耐受能力，已被广泛用于评估气候变化背景下，环境均值与变异的变化如何引发适合度、自然选择及微进化的改变。本文综述了将该研究框架拓展至极端气候事件影响解析时所面临的机遇与挑战。借助极值理论（extreme value theory）中的统计工具，本文阐释了极端热事件的分布如何随纬度、时间尺度及气候变化发生变化。其次，本文综述了热性能曲线与热耐受能力如何被用于预测物种对气候变化及气候梯度的适合度与进化响应。然而，热性能曲线与热耐受能力会随个体先前的热经历及时间尺度发生改变，这为其用于预测极端热事件响应的应用增添了复杂性。第三，本文介绍了若干近期案例研究，揭示了罕见极端事件如何对性能进化产生远超常规的影响