QUANTIFYING FERTILITY LOSS AT HIGH TEMPERATURE ACROSS THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

世界正在迅速变暖，热浪变得越来越普遍。许多动物--包括人类、牲畜、传粉者、疾病媒介和受保护物种--在高温下失去生育能力。重要的是，最近的研究表明，导致不育的温度通常显著低于致死温度，并且种群不能轻易进化以在高温下保持生育力。这意味着，温度升高可能会导致许多物种在热诱导死亡之前很久就因热诱导不育而灭绝。现在，确定使物种易受热育性丧失影响的特征或因素将使我们能够在种群因大规模不育而开始崩溃之前确定关键的保护目标。它还将使我们能够预测气候变化将如何影响病媒和农业重要物种的繁殖能力，以及这种变化将首先发生在世界上的什么地方。不幸的是，我们对导致动物热生育力丧失的因素的了解是初步的，落后于我们对温度对生存影响的理解几十年。例如，我们无法确定男性生育能力是否比女性生育能力更脆弱。陆地物种比水生物种更容易受到影响吗？那热带和温带物种呢？尽管现在有成千上万的已发表的研究记录了实验室或野外环境中动物繁殖力与温度之间的联系，但我们最近收集了2，333篇论文，研究了整个动物王国中温度与繁殖力之间的联系。我们将使用这个数据集进行第一次全球荟萃分析，研究温度上升如何影响动物生育力。我们将测试热肥力是否最受物种发育，生态，生殖生理或地理的影响。至关重要的是，这将使我们能够开始预测哪些分类群将最容易受到全球变暖的影响，以及我们预计何时何地会看到由于生育率下降而导致的人口下降。将我们的结果与致死温度数据进行比较，还将使我们能够识别出导致死亡的温度与生育力丧失之间差异最大的物种;换句话说，温度升高可能导致人口严重下降的物种比我们以前认为的要快。这将使研究人员能够确定未来的保护目标，制定切实可行的生物多样性管理战略，并努力减轻对牲畜、家禽和养殖鱼类繁殖的负面影响。

The world is warming rapidly, and heatwaves are becoming more common. Many animals- including humans, livestock, pollinators, disease vectors, and species of conservation concern- lose fertility at high temperatures. Importantly, recent work suggests that sterility-inducing temperatures are often significantly lower than lethal temperatures, and that populations cannot easily evolve to maintain fertility at high temperatures. This means that rising temperatures may cause many species to become extinct due to heat-induced sterility, long before heat-induced death. Identifying the traits or factors which make species vulnerable to thermal fertility loss now will allow us to identify key conservation targets before populations start to collapse due to mass sterility. It will also allow us to predict how climate change will impact the reproductive capacity of disease vectors and species of agricultural importance, and where in the world such changes will first occur. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the factors driving thermal fertility losses in animals is rudimentary, lagging decades behind our understanding of temperature effects on survival. For example, we do not conclusively know whether male fertility is more vulnerable than female fertility. Are terrestrial species more susceptible than aquatic species? What about tropical versus temperate species? This is despite the fact that there are now thousands of published studies that record the link between animal fertility and temperature in a lab or field setting.We have recently collected 2,333 papers examining the link between temperature and fertility across the animal kingdom. We will use this dataset to conduct the first global meta-analysis examining how rising temperature impacts animal fertility. We will test whether thermal fertility is most impacted by species phylogeny, ecology, reproductive physiology or geography. Crucially, this will allow us to begin to predict which taxa will be most at risk from a warming world, and where and when we expect to see population declines due to fertility loss. Comparing our results to lethal temperature data will also allow us to identify species with the greatest disparity between temperatures causing death vs fertility loss; in other words, species for which rising temperatures may cause severe population declines sooner than we previously thought. This will enable researchers to identify future conservation targets, develop practical biodiversity management strategies, and work to mitigate negative impacts on the reproduction of livestock, poultry and farmed-fish species.