Abstract:Life on Earth spans a range of temperatures and exhibits biological growth rates that are temperature dependent. While the observation that growth rates are temperature dependent is well known, we have recently shown that the statistical distribution of specific growth rates for life on Earth is a function of temperature (Corkrey et al., 2016). The maximum rates of growth of all life have a distinct limit, even when grown under optimal conditions, and which vary predictably with temperature. We term this distr… Show more
“…Thermophiles have evolved specific adaptations to extreme temperature stress, such as mechanisms to cope with increased membrane permeability at high temperatures 60 and thus adaptation to such niches may incur a fitness cost to thermophiles as seen in our results. This result is in concurrence with an investigation of the maximum growth rates of life on Earth, which found increases in microbial growth up to a peak before an attenuation of growth rates in warmer adapted organisms 30,31 . Our results also suggest a limit to thermal adaptation as we find that strains cultured at very high temperature tend to display lower than expected thermal optima (Fig.…”
Section: Discussionsupporting
confidence: 89%
“…Moreover, trade-offs between protein rigidity and activity at high temperatures may in fact cause hot-adapted organisms to display depressed maximal fitness ( decreasing with ) 29 . Indeed, the existence of thermal constraints leading to an upper limit of prokaryotic growth rates has been shown recently 30,31 . However, a comparison of short- and long-term (HiB) responses of prokaryotic populations has neither been made nor the potential effects of responses at different timescales on ecosystem fluxes studied.Fig.…”
Understanding how the metabolic rates of prokaryotes respond to temperature is fundamental to our understanding of how ecosystem functioning will be altered by climate change, as these micro-organisms are major contributors to global carbon efflux. Ecological metabolic theory suggests that species living at higher temperatures evolve higher growth rates than those in cooler niches due to thermodynamic constraints. Here, using a global prokaryotic dataset, we find that maximal growth rate at thermal optimum increases with temperature for mesophiles (temperature optima C), but not thermophiles (C). Furthermore, short-term (within-day) thermal responses of prokaryotic metabolic rates are typically more sensitive to warming than those of eukaryotes. Because climatic warming will mostly impact ecosystems in the mesophilic temperature range, we conclude that as microbial communities adapt to higher temperatures, their metabolic rates and therefore, biomass-specific CO production, will inevitably rise. Using a mathematical model, we illustrate the potential global impacts of these findings.
“…Thermophiles have evolved specific adaptations to extreme temperature stress, such as mechanisms to cope with increased membrane permeability at high temperatures 60 and thus adaptation to such niches may incur a fitness cost to thermophiles as seen in our results. This result is in concurrence with an investigation of the maximum growth rates of life on Earth, which found increases in microbial growth up to a peak before an attenuation of growth rates in warmer adapted organisms 30,31 . Our results also suggest a limit to thermal adaptation as we find that strains cultured at very high temperature tend to display lower than expected thermal optima (Fig.…”
Section: Discussionsupporting
confidence: 89%
“…Moreover, trade-offs between protein rigidity and activity at high temperatures may in fact cause hot-adapted organisms to display depressed maximal fitness ( decreasing with ) 29 . Indeed, the existence of thermal constraints leading to an upper limit of prokaryotic growth rates has been shown recently 30,31 . However, a comparison of short- and long-term (HiB) responses of prokaryotic populations has neither been made nor the potential effects of responses at different timescales on ecosystem fluxes studied.Fig.…”
Understanding how the metabolic rates of prokaryotes respond to temperature is fundamental to our understanding of how ecosystem functioning will be altered by climate change, as these micro-organisms are major contributors to global carbon efflux. Ecological metabolic theory suggests that species living at higher temperatures evolve higher growth rates than those in cooler niches due to thermodynamic constraints. Here, using a global prokaryotic dataset, we find that maximal growth rate at thermal optimum increases with temperature for mesophiles (temperature optima C), but not thermophiles (C). Furthermore, short-term (within-day) thermal responses of prokaryotic metabolic rates are typically more sensitive to warming than those of eukaryotes. Because climatic warming will mostly impact ecosystems in the mesophilic temperature range, we conclude that as microbial communities adapt to higher temperatures, their metabolic rates and therefore, biomass-specific CO production, will inevitably rise. Using a mathematical model, we illustrate the potential global impacts of these findings.
“…Thermophiles have evolved specific adaptations to extreme temperature stress, such as mechanisms to cope with increased membrane permeability at high temperatures 31 and thus adaptation to such niches may incur a fitness cost to thermophiles as seen in our results. This result is in concurrence with an investigation of the maximum growth rates of life on Earth, which found increases in microbial growth up to a peak before an attenuation of growth rates in warmer adapted organisms 28,29 .…”
Section: Resultssupporting
confidence: 89%
“…Moreover, all enzyme families have a hard upper bound on the temperature at which they retain their functional integrity (which evolutionary changes cannot overcome), so very hot temperatures may in fact cause depressed maximal fitness ( P pk decreasing with T pk ). Indeed, the existence of thermal constraints leading to an upper limit of prokaryotic growth rates has been shown recently 28,29 . However a comparison of short- and long-term (HiB) responses of prokaryotic populations has never been made, nor the potential effects of responses at different time-scales on ecosystem fluxes studied.…”
11Understanding how the metabolic rates of prokaryotes respond to temperature is fun-12 damental to our understanding of how ecosystem functioning will be altered by climate 13 change, as these micro-organisms are major contributors to global carbon efflux. Ecological 14 metabolic theory suggests that species living at higher temperatures evolve higher growth 15 rates than those in cooler niches due to thermodynamic constraints. Here, using a global 16 prokaryotic dataset, we find that maximal growth rate at thermal optimum increases with 17 temperature for mesophiles (temperature optima 45 • C), but not thermophiles ( 45 • C). 18 Furthermore, short-term (within-day) thermal responses of prokaryotic metabolic rates are 19 typically more sensitive to warming than those of eukaryotes. Given that climatic warming 20 will mostly impact ecosystems in the mesophilic temperature range, we conclude that as 21 microbial communities adapt to higher temperatures, their metabolic rates and therefore, 22 carbon efflux, will inevitably rise. Using a mathematical model, we illustrate the potential 23 global impacts of these findings. 24 Introduction 25 A general understanding of how individual organisms respond to changing environmental temperature 26 is necessary for predicting how populations, communities and ecosystems will respond to a changing 27 climate 1,2,3,4 . Because fundamental physiological rates of ectotherms are directly affected by environ-28 1 mental temperature 3,5,6 , climatic warming may be expected to lead to ectotherm communities with 29 higher metabolic rates on average 3,7 . How environmental temperature drives metabolic rates of prokary-30 otes (bacteria and archaea) is of particular importance because they are globally ubiquitous, estimated 31 to comprise up to half of the planet's global biomass 8 , and consume (respire) the majority of net primary 32 production 9,10 . Therefore, climate-driven changes in prokaryotic metabolic rates are expected to signif-33 icantly alter ecosystem productivity, nutrient cycling, and carbon flux 9,10,11,12,13,14 . Indeed, increased 34 carbon efflux has been observed in experimental measures of soil CO 2 loss to warming 15,16 , as well as 35 the responses of other microbial metabolic processes to increased temperature such as methanogenesis 17 .
36However, whether the short-term (timescales of minutes to days) thermal responses of prokaryotes can be 37 compensated by acclimation (physiological phenotypic plasticity) or longer-term (timescales of years or 38 months, years or longer) evolutionary adaptation 18,19,20 is currently unclear. The most recent study to 39 investigate this idea concluded that both short-and long-term responses of ecosystem-level heterotrophic 40 respiration were similar 21 . However, this study quantified short-term responses by aggregating day-level 41 carbon fluxes across sites, and did not have data on the direct respiratory contributions of prokaryotyes 42 per se.
43The short term, or "instantaneous" response of metab...
“…It is very unlikely that this behavior would be obeyed ad infinitum because the Arrhenius equation breaks down beyond a certain temperature (Kingsolver 2009;Angilletta 2009;Schulte 2015). The issue, however, is that the optimum temperature, after which the trend reverses, is species-dependent (Clarke 2017;Corkrey et al 2018), and is modulated to some degree by the environment(s) of the putative organisms. We will restrict ourselves to 273 < T W < 323 K, as this interval roughly overlaps with the temperature range of 280 < T W < 322 K studied in Barton et al (2020, pg.…”
Aquatic biospheres reliant on oxygenic photosynthesis are expected to play an important role on Earth-like planets with large-scale oceans insofar as carbon fixation (i.e., biosynthesis of organic compounds) is concerned. We investigate the properties of aquatic biospheres comprising Earth-like biota for habitable rocky planets orbiting Sun-like stars and late-type M-dwarfs such as TRAPPIST-1. In particular, we estimate how these characteristics evolve with the ambient ocean temperature (T W ), which is a key environmental variable. We show that many salient properties, such as the depth of the photosynthesis zone and the net primary productivity (i.e., the effective rate of carbon fixation), are sensitive to T W , and eventually decline substantially as the ocean temperature is increased. We conclude by discussing the implications of our analysis for the past and future Earth, and exoplanets orbiting M-dwarfs.
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