The Semi-Natural Climate Chambers across Latitudes: A Broadly Applicable Husbandry and Experimental System for Terrestrial Ectotherms under Climate Change

Abstract

With limited resources and efforts, assessing species' vulnerabilities across various geographic regions before the conservation practice is essential for biodiversity conservation in the context of climate change. One pressing challenge has been establishing natural temperature-manipulated research systems across latitudes. To address this challenge, an innovative infrastructure is developed named the semi-natural climate chambers across latitudes (SCCAL), consisting of semi-natural climate chambers at three latitudes, spanning 27° and 3393 km from tropical to temperate regions. Each latitude features eight medium-sized patches for temperature manipulation, organisms rearing, and ecological experiments. Independent of external water and electricity supplies, the SCCAL allows to simulate thermal environments under different climate change scenarios with natural soil moisture. Ecological experiments with Grass lizards successfully are conducted, demonstrating that the SCCAL effectively supports species rearing, responses determining, and the vulnerability assessing. The widespread adoption or development of similar infrastructures is encouraged, which can facilitate the assessment of latitudinal animal vulnerabilities under climate change.