PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sasaki, Matthew
AU  - Hedberg, Sydney
AU  - Richardson, Kailin
AU  - Dam, Hans G.
TI  - Complex interactions between local adaptation, plasticity, and sex affect vulnerability to warming in a widespread marine copepod
AID  - 10.1101/423624
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 423624
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/09/23/423624.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/09/23/423624.full
AB  - Predicting the response of populations to climate change requires knowledge of thermal performance. Genetic differentiation and phenotypic plasticity affect thermal performance, but the effects of sex and developmental temperatures often go uncharacterized. We used common garden experiments to test for effects of local adaptation, developmental phenotypic plasticity, and individual sex on thermal performance of the ubiquitous copepod, Acartia tonsa. Females had higher thermal tolerance than males in both populations, while the Florida population had higher thermal tolerance compared to the Connecticut population. An effect of developmental phenotypic plasticity on thermal tolerance was observed only in the Connecticut population. Ignoring sex-specific differences may result in a severe underestimation of population-level impacts of warming (i.e. - population decline due to sperm limitation). Further, despite having a higher thermal tolerance, southern populations may be more vulnerable to warming as they lack the ability to respond to increases in temperature through phenotypic plasticity.