Influence of respiratory mode on the thermal tolerance of intertidal limpets

Predicting ecological responses to climate change requires an understanding of the mechanisms that influence species’ tolerances to temperature. Based on the idea that air and water breathing animals are differentially suited to life in either medium due to differences in their respiratory morphology, we examined the possibility that the thermal tolerances of co-existing intertidal pulmonate and patellogastropod limpets may differ in different breathing media. We tested this by determining each species’ median lethal temperature (LT(50)) and cardiac Arrhenius breakpoint temperature (ABT) as measures of upper thermal tolerance limits, in air and water. Although all these species can survive in air and water, we hypothesised that the pulmonate limpets, Siphonaria capensis and S. serrata, would have higher thermal limits than the patellogastropod limpets, Cellana capensis and Scutellastra granularis, in air and vice versa in water. The results did not support our hypotheses, since C. capensis had similar thermal tolerance limits to the pulmonate limpets in air and the pulmonate limpets had thermal tolerance limits similar to or higher than S. granularis in water. Thus, considering pulmonate and patellid limpets as groups, we found no differences in their collective upper thermal tolerance limits in either medium. We conclude that differences between these two limpet groups in their respiratory morphology do not influence thermal tolerance, but that tolerances are species-specific.