Version 1
: Received: 21 June 2023 / Approved: 21 June 2023 / Online: 21 June 2023 (14:41:49 CEST)
How to cite:
Marino, F.E. Climate Change and the Evolutionary Adaptations and Limitations of Homeothermy. Preprints2023, 2023061566. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202306.1566.v1
Marino, F.E. Climate Change and the Evolutionary Adaptations and Limitations of Homeothermy. Preprints 2023, 2023061566. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202306.1566.v1
Marino, F.E. Climate Change and the Evolutionary Adaptations and Limitations of Homeothermy. Preprints2023, 2023061566. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202306.1566.v1
APA Style
Marino, F.E. (2023). Climate Change and the Evolutionary Adaptations and Limitations of Homeothermy. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202306.1566.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Marino, F.E. 2023 "Climate Change and the Evolutionary Adaptations and Limitations of Homeothermy" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202306.1566.v1
Abstract
The relationship between living things and their respective environments highly dependent on body temperature regulation. The human capacity to effectively thermoregulate evolved at a time when the environmental temperature was likely around 25°C during the Eocene epoch, some ~ 50-60 million years ago. This effectively meant that homeothermy settled on a core temperature balance point of ~ 37°C. When Homo split from chimpanzee around 5 million years ago the Earth was entering a cooling period where the balance point temperature was always well above that of the environment and body heat balance could be maintained. Following this cooling period, the Earth’s rewarming by 7 °C took over approximately 5,000 years, whereas the current estimates indicate 0.7 °C over the past 100 years; ten times the rate of ice-age-recovery warming, or 20 times faster compared with the last 2 million years. As such, if the predicted continued rise in global temperature continues, and surface temperature reaches values where heat load cannot be dumped as the body temperature balance point is at or near the environmental temperature, areas of the Earth would become inhospitable. This effectively means that we will need to deal with both physiological and behavioral limitations since our ability to adapt will be limited by a thermoregulatory strategy that evolved over millions of years for a different kind of environment, not one that is predicted to change rapidly over the next century. This paper outlines the basis on which Homo settled on a thermoregulatory balance point and what limitations this presents for us in the future.
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
