This study was supported

by CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, INCT Entomologia Molecular), by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG) and by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ). BYL719 mw “
“As poikilothermic ectotherms, invertebrates have limited means of regulating their own body temperature and are instead dependent on the thermal conditions of their environment (Speight et al., 2008). It is widely acknowledged therefore that the spatial and temporal distribution and abundance of invertebrates are partly determined by the range of temperatures they can tolerate and by the range of temperatures at which they perform optimally (Gaston, 2009 and Terblanche et al., 2011). Investigations into the thermal tolerance limits selleck chemical of invertebrates are accordingly necessary to fully understand the ecology of a species or population and to infer the impact of climate change (e.g. Deutsch et al., 2008, Everatt et al., 2013 and Somero, 2005). A common limitation of many current thermal biology studies, however, is their emphasis on organismal survival. While

survival clearly underpins the fitness of a species, there are also a number of other attributes which are greatly affected by temperature (Bale, 2002). These attributes, termed sub-lethal characteristics, include courtship, reproduction, foraging/feeding and predator avoidance (Kelty and Lee, 1999 and Korenko et al., 2010). When these attributes can occur is governed by the upper and lower activity thresholds of the organism, and this thermal activity ‘window’ demonstrates phenotypic plasticity depending on the geographic location and the thermal/physiological history of the organism being studied (Addo-Bediako

et al., 2000 and Bale and Hayward, 2010). Because thermal activity thresholds are affected Gefitinib by less extreme temperatures, more regularly encountered than those which cause mortality, the extent to which sub-lethal characteristics are affected could be of more importance than the ability to survive temperature extremes per se. The limits of movement under low temperatures have been a source of fascination since the late 19th Century. Rossbach (1872) observed the frequency of contractions of the contractile vesicle of three protist species and noticed that, at some low temperature, contractions ceased. He termed the absence of movement ‘chill coma’. By 1939, the terminology relating to chill coma encompassed four potential states; chill coma1 – absence of activity and movement, chill coma2 – final peak of activity and movement, chill coma3 – loss of coordination, and chill coma4 – absence of spontaneous movement, and these terms have remained in use to this day (Hazell and Bale, 2011). Within this paper, the first definition will be used, i.e.