Why “Suboptimal” Is Optimal: Jensen’s Inequality and Ectotherm Thermal Preferences

By T. Martin, R. Huey. American Naturalist, 2008

619 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2698cb728fc1118d3315080f39041c0ee3465dca

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Citations in the corpus

Can we predict ectotherm responses to climate change using thermal performance curves and body temperatures? (2016, background): “2), which should (theoretically) be the preferred temperature (but see Martin & Huey 2008).”
The role of temperature variability on insect performance and population dynamics in a warming world (2014, methodology): “In the last few years, several authors (Chown and Nicolson 2004, Frazier et al. 2006, Martin and Huey 2008, Angilletta 2009, Chown et al. 2010, Paaijmans et al. 2010, Lambrechts et al. 2011) have explored the consequences of the nonlinear relationships between body temperature and several…”
Thermoregulatory behaviour limits local adaptation of thermal niches and confers sensitivity to climate change (2015, background): “We note that lizards tend to prefer body temperatures slightly below their thermal optimum for physiological performances (33 °C) to avoid thermal stress (Martin & Huey 2008).”
Thermal optimum for pikeperch (Sander lucioperca) and the use of ventilation frequency as a predictor of metabolic rate (2012, background): “As such, the thermal preference of an ectothermic animal is often close to temperatures where physiological performance is at its optimum (Martin and Huey, 2008) and Darwinian fitness is at its maximum.”
Is life-history buffering or lability adaptive in stochastic environments? (2009, background): “For example, behavioral plasticity enables ectotherms to locate habitats that help moderate body temperature and buffer mortality against external fluctuations in temperature (Martin and Huey 2008).”
Thermal biology of mosquito-borne disease (2019, background): “Because trait thermal responses are nonlinear, trait performance under varying temperatures deviates from performance at constant temperatures due to Jensen’s inequality (Table 1) (Martin & Huey 2008; Paaijmans et al. 2010a; Lambrechts et al. 2011).”
Predicting organismal vulnerability to climate warming: roles of behaviour, physiology and adaptation (2012, background): “An organism’s integrated performance or ﬁtness over some time interval depends on its performance curve, weighted by the T b it experiences during that interval [22,50,54–56].”
Systematic variation in the temperature dependence of physiological and ecological traits (2011, background): “We find a general pattern in the rise component, which covers the temperature range over which organisms commonly operate under natural conditions (3, 26).”
Temperature‐by‐nutrient interactions affecting growth rate in an insect ectotherm (2010, background): “It has been assumed that thermal preference for an organism is coadapted to select this ‘optimal temperature’ allowing maximal Darwinian fitness (Huey & Bennett, 1987; but see Martin & Huey, 2008).”