Trade-offs between baseline thermal tolerance and thermal tolerance plasticity are much less common than it appears

Abstract

Thermal tolerance plasticity is a core mechanism by which organisms can mitigate the effects of climate change. As a result, there is a need to understand how variation in tolerance plasticity arises. The baseline tolerance/plasticity trade-off hypothesis (hereafter referred to as the trade-off hypothesis, TOH) has recently emerged as a potentially powerful explanation. The TOH posits that organisms with high baseline thermal tolerance have reduced thermal tolerance plasticity relative to those with low baseline tolerance. Many studies have found support for the TOH. However, this support must be regarded cautiously because the most common means of testing the TOH can yield spurious “trade-offs” due to regression to the mean. I acquired data for 25 previously published analyses that supported the TOH at the intraspecific level and reanalyzed them after applying a method that adjusts plasticity estimates for regression to the mean. Only six of the 25 analyses remained statistically significant after adjustment, and effect size and variance explained decreased in all cases. The few data sets in which support for the TOH was maintained after adjustment point to areas of future study, but are too few to make generalizations at this point. In sum, regression to the mean has led to a substantial overestimation of support for the TOH and must be accounted for in future tests of the hypothesis.