A comprehensive database of amphibian heat tolerance

Abstract

Rising temperatures represent a significant threat to the survival of ectothermic animals. As such, upper thermal limits represent an important trait to assess the vulnerability of ectotherms to changing temperatures. For instance, one may use upper thermal limits to estimate current and future thermal safety margins (i.e., the proximity of upper thermal limits to experienced temperatures), use this trait together with other physiological traits in species distribution models, or investigate the plasticity and evolvability of these limits for buffering the impacts of changing temperatures. While datasets on thermal tolerance limits have been previously compiled, they sometimes report single estimates for a given species, do not present measures of data dispersion, and are biased towards certain parts of the globe. To overcome these limitations, we systematically searched the literature in seven languages to produce the most comprehensive dataset to date on amphibian upper thermal limits, spanning 3,095 estimates across 616 species. This resource will represent a useful tool to evaluate the vulnerability of amphibians, and ectotherms more generally, to changing temperatures.

The impact of rising temperatures on the prevalence of coral diseases and its predictability: a global meta-analysis

“…While our literature sample size is large, assessing more regions (given coral reefs are in developing nations) and including as many languages as possible in future reviews would aid in accurately describing the state of knowledge and incorporate a more global representation of data. Other languages make up 35% of literature in similar fields (Amano et al, 2016) and recent reports suggest non-English literature does augment environmental data in a non-negligible way (Amano et al, 2022;Pottier et al, 2022). Moreover, we also excluded grey literature, such as government reports.…”

Not lost in translation

“…Therefore, making the most of the opportunities that are available due to global interconnectedness remains dependent on different economic and social agents being able to understand each other. Across the world, more than 7 000 different languages exist, although this number depends on how languages are classified -Max Weinreich famously remarked that the distinction between what is classified as a language and what is classified as a dialect is that a language is a dialect with an armyand many languages face imminent extinction because they are used by only a few, mostly elderly individuals (Bromham et al, 2021[2]; Joshi et al, 2021 [3]; Potowski, 2013 [4]) 2.…”

“…Some individuals are able to communicate in more than one language in communities that are bi-or multi-lingual because of historical, geographical or demographic reasons or if they learnt one or more languages by participating in formal, non-formal or informal learning opportunities. 4.…”

“…Figure 4.7. shows the top 20 out of 60 4 most frequently mentioned skills groups in online job postings of language professionals between 2015 and 2019. Among the top 20 skills groups, 45% represent transversal skills, 40% represent knowledge skills and 15% represent digital skills.…”

“…For instance, skills keywords such as computational linguistics, machine translation and computer-assisted translation, all belong to the writing skill category. 4 The groups Local Language and Foreign Language from the taxonomy in Lassébie et al (2021[156]) are aggregated into one category Languages in this working paper.…”