维尔茨堡大学Marcell K. Peters研究组近日取得一项新成果。经过不懈努力，他们提出了热带昆虫有限的耐热性及其基因组特征。该项研究成果发表在2026年3月4日出版的《自然》上。

在这里，研究组将环境温度与野外测量的2300种昆虫沿着非洲热带和新热带海拔梯度的热耐受性上限和下限进行了比较，并确定了昆虫生命树的热耐受性基因组特征。该课题组人员表明，热容不成比例地跟踪环境温度，但在热带低地接近渐近线。高海拔地区的昆虫利用可塑性来应对不断上升的温度，而低地物种的可塑性能力有限。昆虫的耐热性在不同目、不同科之间存在较大差异，这反映在蛋白质的热稳定性上，表明昆虫的耐热性差异存在于基本的蛋白质结构中。亚马逊低地高达52%的未来地表温度和38%的空气温度可以在一半的研究社区中引起热死亡。他们的数据表明，在地球上生物多样性最丰富的地区，昆虫缓冲未来变暖的能力有限。

据悉，昆虫占所有动物物种的大多数，其中70%生活在热带地区，但气候变暖对热带昆虫的影响仍然高度不确定。这是因为关于热带昆虫耐热性的数据很少，在分类学上存在偏差，而且对其潜在的生理机制了解不完全。

附：英文原文

Title: Limited thermal tolerance in tropical insects and its genomic signature

Author: Holzmann, Kim L., Schmitzer, Thomas, Abels, Antonia, orkalo, Marko, Mitesser, Oliver, Kortmann, Mareike, Alonso-Alonso, Pedro, Correa-Carmona, Yenny, Pinos, Andrea, Yon, Felipe, Alvarado, Mabel, Forsyth, Adrian, Lopera-Toro, Alejandro, Brehm, Gunnar, Keller, Alexander, Otieno, Mark, Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf, Peters, Marcell K.

Issue&Volume: 2026-03-04

Abstract: Insects make up the majority of all animal species, with 70% occurring in the tropics1, yet the impacts of warming on tropical insects remain highly uncertain2. This stems from sparse, taxonomically biased data on thermal tolerance of tropical insects and an incomplete understanding of the underlying physiological mechanisms3. Here we compared environmental temperatures with field-measured upper and lower thermal tolerance limits of around 2,300 insect species along Afrotropical and Neotropical elevational gradients and identified genomic signatures of thermal tolerance across the insect tree of life. We show that thermal tolerances do not proportionally track environmental temperatures but approach an asymptote in tropical lowlands. Insects at high elevations utilize plasticity to cope with rising temperatures, whereas lowland species have limited plastic abilities. Heat tolerance showed strong differences among insect orders and families, reflected in the thermal stability of proteins, suggesting that variation in thermal tolerance is founded in the fundamental protein architecture. Up to 52% of future surface temperatures and 38% of air temperatures in the Amazonian lowlands can cause heat mortality in half of the studied community. Our data suggest a limited capacity of insects in the Earth’s most biodiverse regions to buffer future warming.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10155-w

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10155-w