Volta

Behavior as a Keystone Trait: A Conceptual Framework Applied to the Problem of Heat

Rising global temperatures underscore the urgent need to interrogate the longstanding hypothesis that behavioral traits play an influential role in adaptation to environmental change. The past decade has seen major gains in understanding how physiology responds to heat, but key gaps remain regarding the role of diverse behavioral traits. Here, we advance the idea that some behaviors may function as keystone traits, exerting disproportionate and cascading effects on organismal performance, population-level processes, and evolutionary outcomes under heat. In this perspective piece, we urge new research to isolate the role of behavior in mitigating heat via an explicitly behavior-centric framework, which features three key components: First, experiment design must scrutinize the scope, causes, and downstream consequences of behavioral variation. Second, we …

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