One study that I came across examined the effects of climate change on ectothermic species, due to the fact that they constitute a vast amount of biodiversity and are potentially vulnerable to climate change because their basic physiological functions are influenced by temperature (Deutsch et al 2007). There have been many studies that examined how temperature impacts insect’s intrinsic rate of population growth (Frazier 2006). This study used data from previous studies to construct fitness curves for each insect species in order to calculate the change in population growth from the observed climate of the late 20th century to a model-simulated climate of the 21st century. The researchers predicted that after a century of warming, population growth rates will change …show more content…
For each taxonomic group, they found that warming tolerance of an organism increased strongly with the seasonal temperature variability of its habitat. This pattern indicates that warming will cause tropical vertebrates to approach their critical maximum temperatures faster than high-latitude species. Consequently, tropical vertebrate species of all four taxonomic groups will likely experience the most detrimental changes in thermal performance during warming. In addition, if global temperatures continue to rise beyond the 21st century projection, even high latitude species will begin to experience decreased performance, as temperatures exceed their optimum conditions. Ultimately, what can be determined from this study is that organisms with the greatest risk for extinction from rapid climate change are those with a low tolerance for warming, limited acclimation ability, and reduced