Ectotherms can respond to global warming via evolutionary change of their upper thermal limits (CTmax). Thus, the estimation of CTmax and its evolutionary potential is crucial to determine their vulnerability to global warming. However, CTmax estimations depend on the thermal stress intensity, and it is not completely clear whether its evolutionary capacity can be affected. Here, we performed an artificial selection experiment to increase heat tolerance using fast‐ and slow‐ramping selection protocols in Drosophila subobscura. We found that heat tolerance evolved in both selection protocols, exhibiting similar evolutionary change rates and realized heritabilities. Additionally, we estimated the thermal performance curves (TPC) to evaluate correlated responses to selection on heat tolerance. We detected that thermal optimum increased in fast‐ramping selection lines, but with a cost at the thermal performance breadth. Conversely, we did not detect changes in the TPC for the slow‐ramping selection lines, indicating that thermal stress intensity has important effects on the evolution of thermal physiology of ectotherms. These findings, together with previous studies in D. subobscura reporting interpopulation variability and significant heritabilities for heat tolerance, suggest that evolutionary change can contribute to insect persistence in thermally changing environments and adaptation to global warming conditions.

Evolutionary change of thermal traits (i.e., heat tolerance and behavioural thermoregulation) is one of the most important mechanisms exhibited by organisms to respond to global warming. However, the evolutionary potential of heat tolerance, estimated as narrow‐sense heritability, depends on the methodology employed. An alternative adaptive mechanism to buffer extreme temperatures is behavioural thermoregulation, although the association between heat tolerance and thermal preference is not clearly understood. We suspect that methodological effects associated with the duration of heat stress during thermal tolerance assays are responsible for missing this genetic association. To test this hypothesis, we estimated the heritabilities and genetic correlations for thermal traits in Drosophila subobscura, using high‐temperature static and slow ramping assays. We found that heritability for heat tolerance was higher in static assays (h2 = 0.134) than in slow ramping assays (h2 = 0.084), suggesting that fast assays may provide a more precise estimation of the genetic variation of heat tolerance. In addition, thermal preference exhibited a low heritability (h2 = 0.066), suggesting a reduced evolutionary response for this trait. We also found that the different estimates of heat tolerance and thermal preference were not genetically correlated, regardless of how heat tolerance was estimated. In conclusion, our data suggest that these thermal traits can evolve independently in this species. In agreement with previous evidence, these results indicate that methodology may have an important impact on genetic estimates of heat tolerance and that fast assays are more likely to detect the genetic component of heat tolerance.

Marine blue mussels (Mytilus spp.) are widespread species that exhibit an antitropical distribution with five species occurring in the Northern Hemisphere (M. trossulus, M. edulis, M. galloprovincialis, M. californianus and M. coruscus) and three in the Southern Hemisphere (M. galloprovincialis, M. chilensis and M. platensis). Species limits in this group remain controversial, in particular for those forms that live in South America. Here we investigated structural characteristics of marine mussels mitogenomes, based on published F mtDNA sequences of Northern Hemisphere species and two newly sequenced South American genomes, one from the Atlantic M. platensis and another from the Pacific M. chilensis. These mitogenomes exhibited similar architecture to those of other genomes of Mytilus, including the presence of the Atp8 gene, which is missing in most of the other bivalves. Our evolutionary analysis of mitochondrial genes indicates that purifying selection is the predominant force shaping the evolution of the coding genes. Results of our phylogenetic analyses supported the monophyly of Pteriomorphia and fully resolved the phylogenetic relationships among its five orders. Finally, the low genetic divergence of specimens assigned to M. chilensis and M. platensis suggests that these South American marine mussels represent conspecific variants rather than distinct species.

Adaptation to warming conditions involves increased heat tolerance and metabolic changes to reduce maintenance costs and maximize biological functions close to fitness. Evidence shows that energy metabolism evolves in response to warming conditions, but we know little about how heat stress intensity determines the evolutionary responses of metabolism and life history traits. Here, we evaluated the evolutionary responses of energy metabolism and life-history traits to artificial selection for increasing heat tolerance in Drosophila subobscura, using 2 protocols to measure and select heat tolerance: slow and fast ramping protocols. We found that the increase in heat tolerance was associated with reduced activity of the enzymes involved in the glucose-6-phosphate branchpoint but no changes of the metabolic rate in selected lines. We also found that the evolution of increased heat tolerance increased the early fecundity in selected lines and increased the egg-to-adult viability only in the slow-ramping selected lines. This work shows heat tolerance can evolve under different thermal scenarios but with different evolutionary outcomes on associated traits depending on the heat stress intensity. Therefore, spatial and temporal variability of thermal stress intensity should be taken into account to understand and predict the adaptive response to ongoing and future climatic conditions.