thermal biology

Temperature is one of the most pervasive physical forces shaping animal life. Because the biochemical reactions that power cellular processes are inherently temperature-sensitive, an animal’s ability to maintain performance — whether flying, foraging, or reproducing — depends critically on how well it manages its thermal environment. This may be particularly true for insects, which are relatively small and therefore lose/gain heat more rapidly, yet often operate in thermally variable and demanding conditions.

A significant portion of research in the lab concerns the thermal biology of insects, with a focus on how temperature affects metabolic rate, locomotor performance, and thermal tolerance, and how these relationships vary across species, life stages, and environmental contexts. We study both how animals respond to acute thermal challenges — such as heat stress or cold exposure — and how they acclimate or adapt to longer-term shifts in temperature. Our work spans taxa including bumble bees, solitary bees, honey bees, monarch butterflies, dragonflies, but also salamanders, and we approach these questions using a combination of respirometry, infrared thermography, and behavioral assays.

A recurring theme is the interplay between thermal biology and other stressors. Pathogen infection, pesticide exposure, and nutritional status can all alter an animal’s thermal tolerance or thermoregulatory capacity — with potentially serious consequences for individual fitness and population-level outcomes. Complementing this empirical work, the lab has also developed biophysical models that predict the thermal limits of animal behavior from first principles — including operative temperature models for the honey bee that integrate environmental heat sources and sinks to estimate the conditions under which foraging and other outside-colony behaviors become thermally viable or untenable. As climate change continues to shift thermal landscapes, understanding how these stressors interact with temperature is increasingly urgent, particularly for pollinators and other ecologically and agriculturally important species. The lab is actively working to characterize these interactions and their implications for how insect communities may respond to a warming world.