Check out our new paper on testing the climate variability hypothesis in mitochondrial thermal acclimation of Rocky Mountain mayflies! This work was done in collaboration with Justin Havird at UT- Austin and Adam Chicco at Colorado State U and was included in a special issue in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - B. We found that at the mitochondrial level, thermal acclimation capacity decreased when acclimated to higher temperatures, but this was less so for low elevation populations that experience higher levels of thermal variation. Still, mitochondrial acclimation appeared to be generally greater than that measured at the whole-organism level suggesting that links between mitochondrial function and higher level phenotypes are complicated. 

Tylor Keeley, my first undergrad mentee in Montana, finished an excellent project measuring flight performance in Lednia that were raised at different temperatures. This marks the first time flight has been measured in an alpine stonefly and Tylor did an incredible job! He found that flight ability declines when stoneflies have been raised at constant high temperatures (13C, 20C), but is retained when stoneflies experience much colder temperatures (1C, 4C, and variable temperatures), which are more similar to their native stream thermal regimes.