Meeting Abstract
The eastern red-backed salamander (Plethodon cinereus) is the most widely distributed Plethodon species, extending farther north than any other lungless salamander. This species’ geographic distribution raises two major questions: How does P. cinereus thrive across a wide range of temperatures, and does it possess thermal adaptations that will buffer the ecological consequences of climate change? To explore these questions, I first examined the effects of elevated temperature on metabolic hormone release rates and physiological performance across a latitudinal population gradient. Second, I performed a study to disentangle the environmental and evolutionary drivers of thermal limits across the geographic range of P. cinereus. Finally, I combined laboratory experiments, field observations, and population models to explore the role of behavioral thermoregulation in shaping physiological performance. By considering multiple physiological metrics and sampling a large geographic area, I have identified several behavioral and physiological traits that promote performance, and likely fitness, across a wide range of temperatures in this species. Importantly, individuals collected from warmer localities possessed behaviors for coping with the energetic demands of elevated temperatures, whereas those from cooler localities did not. Further, I found evidence that population- and clade-variation in thermal traits will affect population responses to climate change. Together, these results highlight the importance of considering multiple physiological metrics and sampling large geographic areas to understand species’ abundance and distributions, and to assess species’ vulnerability to climate change.
