Vulnerability of amphibians to global warming

Abstract Amphibians are the most threatened vertebrates, yet their resilience to rising temperatures remains poorly understood 1,2 . This is primarily because knowledge of thermal tolerance is taxonomically and geographically biased 3 , compromising global climate vulnerability assessments. Here we used a phylogenetically informed data-imputation approach to predict the heat tolerance of 60% of amphibian species and assessed their vulnerability to daily temperature variations in thermal refugia. We found that 104 out of 5,203 species (2%) are currently exposed to overheating events in shaded terrestrial conditions. Despite accounting for heat-tolerance plasticity, a 4 °C global temperature increase would…