Climate variability predicts thermal limits of aquatic insects across elevation and latitude

Janzen's extension of the climate variability hypothesis (CVH) posits that increased seasonal variation at high latitudes should result in greater temperature overlap across elevations, and favour wider thermal breadths in temperate organisms compared to their tropical counterparts. We tested these predictions by measuring stream temperatures and thermal breadths (i.e. the difference between the critical thermal maximum and minimum) of 62 aquatic insect species from temperate (Colorado, USA) and tropical (Papallacta, Ecuador) streams spanning an elevation gradient of c. 2000 m. Temperate streams exhibited greater seasonal temperature variation and overlap across elevations than tropical streams, and as predicted, temperate aquatic insects exhibited broader thermal breadths than tropical insects. However, elevation had contrasting effects on patterns of thermal breadth. In temperate species, thermal breadth decreased with increasing elevation because CTMAX declined with elevation while CTMIN was similar across elevations. In tropical insects, by contrast, CTMAX declined less sharply than CTMIN with elevation, causing thermal breadth to increase with elevation. These macrophysiological patterns are consistent with the narrower elevation ranges found in other tropical organisms, and they extend Janzen's CVH to freshwater streams. Furthermore, because lowland tropical aquatic insects have the narrowest thermal breadths of any region, they may be particularly vulnerable to short-term extreme changes in stream temperature. A plain language summary is available for this article. © 2017 The Authors. Functional Ecology © 2017 British Ecological Society