Thermal specialists' climatic niches defy expectations, challenging niche modeling assumptions for predicting climate change impacts.
The researchers studied desert specialist ants to see if their heat tolerance, chill coma recovery, body size, and evolutionary history could predict where they live. They found that these factors did not predict the ants' actual habitats, even though they are important for the ants' survival. This challenges the idea that where a species lives now can tell us what it needs to survive. This could be a problem for predicting how species will respond to climate change.