Dr. Katie Marshall University of British Columbia Causes and consequences of low temperature limits in invertebrates While biogeographical theory has frequently suggested that poleward range limits are set by abiotic factors such as temperature, it remains unclear what role low temperature tolerance plays in setting these limits. In particular, species distribution modelling methods that rely on correlative approaches may underestimate the role that plasticity plays in setting poleward range limits. My laboratory focuses on the physiology of low temperature tolerance in invertebrates, using several systems to test the causes and plasticity of limits to freeze tolerance and freeze avoidance. While these "bottom up" approaches are particularly powerful in well-characterized systems like spruce budworm where resources like genomes and population distributions are available, we also believe that invertebrate macroecology needs new and better tools for understanding the ranges and population sizes of invertebrates. So we have also been focusing on developing machine learning and metabarcoding methods to start developing datasets that can be used to test mechanistic hypotheses about the drivers of poleward range limits.
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