Jesper Givskov Sørensen

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Aarhus University

Environmental temperature variation, naturally occurring or induced by climate change, leads organisms to evolve behavioural and physiological responses to handle thermal fluctuations. Among them, phenotypic plasticity is considered a fundamental response to natural thermal variations. Nevertheless, we know little about the rate of thermal acclimat...

Runge E, Neuber R, Łupikasza E, Hübner C, Holmén K (eds) 2025: SESS report 2024, Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System, Longyearbyen. https://sios-svalbard.org/SESS_Issue7

Summary for stakeholders: Invertebrate chapter in the State of Environmental Science in Svalbard report 2024: Terrestrial and freshwater invertebrate science in Svalbard in a changing world: from regional to pan-Arctic scales (STAFIEN - Svalbard Terrestrial and Freshwater Invertebrate Ecology Network)

The ability of organisms to cope with poor quality nutrition is essential for their persistence. For species with a short generation time, the nutritional environments can transcend generations, making it beneficial for adults to prime their offspring to particular diets. However, our understanding of adaptive generational responses, including thos...

Some insect species have been proposed as a sustainable alternative to traditional animal‐based food and feed sources. Optimisation of insect production can generally be achieved using two main approaches: optimising environmental conditions and improving traits of interest through selective breeding. These avenues are not inseparable as performanc...

Insect production for food and feed presents a promising supplement to ensure food safety and address the adverse impacts of agriculture on climate and environment in the future. However, optimisation is required for insect production to realise its full potential. This can be by targeted improvement of traits of interest through selective breeding...

Large scale genomic resources can place genetic variation into an ecologically informed context. To advance our understanding of the population genetics of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster , we present an expanded release of the community-generated population genomics resource Drosophila Evolution over Space and Time (DEST 2.0; https://dest.bi...

Few investigations have been made to determine whether pharmaceutical drugs cause any generational effects. These effects can be divided into intergenerational and transgenerational effects. In insects, the F1 offspring of exposed individuals are considered to show intergenerational effects (as they have been exposed as germ cells or early embryos)...

There is experimental evidence that microbiomes have a strong influence on a range of host traits. Understanding the basis and importance of symbiosis between host and associated microorganisms is a rapidly developing research field, and we still lack a mechanistic understanding of ecological and genetic pressures affecting host-microbiome associat...

How species thrive in a wide range of environments is a major focus of evolutionary biology. For many species, limited genetic diversity or gene flow among habitats means that phenotypic plasticity must play an important role in their capacity to tolerate environmental heterogeneity and to colonize new habitats. However, we have a limited understan...

Insect production for food and feed presents a promising supplement to ensure food safety and address the adverse impacts of agriculture on climate and environment in the future. However, optimisation is required for insect production to realise its full potential. This can be by targeted improvement of traits of interest through selective breeding...

The Arctic is a highly variable environment in which extreme daily and seasonal temperature fluctuations can occur. With climate change, an increase in the occurrence of extreme high temperatures and drought events is expected. While the effects of cold and dehydration stress on polar arthropods are well studied in combination, little is known abou...

The Arctic is impacted by some of the fastest temperature changes observed on Earth, but the impact on the terrestrial arthropod fauna is unclear. Acute physiological thermal limits of terrestrial ectotherms from high latitudes often exceed the local air temperatures, suggesting that they may be able to cope with increasing temperatures. However, k...

Background There is a burgeoning interest in using insects as a sustainable source of food and feed, particularly by capitalising on various waste materials and by-products that are typically considered of low value. Enhancing the commercial production of insects can be achieved through two main approaches: optimising environmental conditions and i...

BACKGROUND Wood ants are promising biocontrol agents in fruit plantations because they prey on pest insects and inhibit plant diseases. However, these ants also attend plant‐feeding homopterans to harvest their honeydew secretions, thereby increasing their numbers. This problem can be solved by offering ants alternative sugar sources that are more...

It is well established that environmental and biotic stressors like temperature and pathogens/parasites are essential for the life of small ectotherms. There are complex interactions between cold stress and pathogen infection in insects. Possible cross-protective mechanisms occur between both stressors, suggesting broad connectivity in insect stres...

Simple Summary The production performances of Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL) are highly affected by substrate quality. Currently, multiple sources of side-streams are used to develop diets of increased complexity and quality. This increases production costs (and potentially reduces profit) and results in additional environmental impacts associated...

Genetic adaptation of Hermetia illucens (BSF) to suboptimal single sourced wastes can open new perspectives for insect production. Here, four replicate BSF lines were maintained on a single sourced, low-quality wheat bran diet (WB) or on a high-quality chicken feed diet (CF) for 13 generations. We continuously evaluated evolutionary responses in se...

The widespread agricultural and industrial emissions of copper-based chemicals have increased copper levels in soils worldwide. Copper contamination can cause a range of toxic effects on soil animals and influence thermal tolerance. However, toxic effects are commonly investigated using simple endpoints (e.g., mortality) and acute tests. Thus, how...

The frequency and intensity of extreme heat in the environment have increased in the last decade. Extreme heating events (EHE) have wide-ranging impacts on biological systems from the molecular to the community level. However, the impacts of EHE have been poorly studied in pathogen–host systems. Here, we explore how EHE affects the interaction amon...

The successful mass-rearing of potential biological control agents is a prerequisite for sustainable pest control. In this study, the performance of 3 Trichogramma euproctidis (Girault) (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae) populations collected from different locations in Khuzestan (Southwest Iran) were evaluated to optimize the egg parasitoid mass-rea...

Plastic responses to heat stress have been shown to temporarily increase heat stress tolerance in many small ectotherms. Heat shock proteins (Hsps) have previously been shown to play a role in this induced heat stress tolerance. The heat shock response is fast but short lived, with the cellular Hsp concentration peaking within a few hours after ind...

Tolerance to thermal extremes is critical for the geographic distributions of ectotherm species, many of which are probably going to be modified by future climatic changes. To predict species distributions it is important to understand the potential of species to adapt to changing thermal conditions. Here, we tested whether the thermal tolerance tr...

Adaptation to environmental variability is a prerequisite for species’ persistence in their natural environments. With climate change predicted to increase the frequency and severity of temperature fluctuations, ectothermic organisms may increasingly depend on acclimation capacity to accommodate thermal variability. To elucidate the molecular basis...

Insects are mass-reared for release for biocontrol including the sterile insect technique. Insects are usually reared at temperatures that maximize the number of animals produced, are chilled for handling and transport, and released into the field, where temperatures may be considerably different to those experienced previously. Insect thermal biol...

Accurately phenotyping numerous test subjects is essential for most experimental research. Collecting such data can be tedious or time-consuming, and it can be biased or limited by manual observations. The thermal tolerance of small ectotherms is a good example of this type of phenotypic data, and it is widely used to investigate thermal adaptation...

Increases in Arctic temperatures have accelerated melting of the Greenland icesheet, exposing intertidal organisms, such as the blue mussel Mytilus edulis, to high air temperatures and low salinities in summer. However, the interaction of these combined stressors is poorly described at the transcriptional level. Comparing expression profiles of M....

Pathogens can modify many aspects of host behavior or physiology with cascading impacts across trophic levels in terrestrial food webs. These changes include thermal tolerance of hosts, however the effects of fungal infections on thermal tolerances and behavioral responses to extreme temperatures (ET) across trophic levels have rarely been studied....

Temperature is one of the primary environmental drivers of the distribution of species, and particularly high temperatures challenge physiological processes by disruption of cellular homoeostasis. This exerts selection on organisms to maintain cellular homoeostasis by adaptive physiological and/or behavioural responses. The social spider Stegodyphu...

The spotted wing drosophila (SWD), Drosophila suzukii, is a major invasive fruit pest. There is strong consensus that low temperature is among the main drivers of SWD population distribution, and the invasion success of SWD is also linked to its thermal plasticity. Most studies on ectotherm cold tolerance focus on exposure to a single stressful tem...

Recently it has been proposed, that the holobiont, i.e., the host and its associated microbiome, constitute a distinct biological entity, on which selection operates. This is a fascinating idea that so far has limited empirical justification. Here Drosophila melanogaster lines from a large-scale artificial selection experiment, where we selected fo...

The performance of biological control agents (BCAs) is strongly regulated by ambient temperature. Understanding the thermal biology of BCAs is a crucial first step for manipulation of their thermal performance, which could be a potential avenue to improve biological control efficacy. In this study, the effects of temperature on several life history...

Understanding how species can thrive in a range of environments is a central challenge for evolutionary ecology. There is strong evidence for local adaptation along large‐scale ecological clines in insects. However, potential adaptation among neighbouring populations differing in their environment has been studied much less. We used RAD‐sequencing...

Pathogens can alter the thermal tolerances of insects; these changes can have cascading impacts across trophic levels in terrestrial food webs. However, the effects of fungal infections on thermal tolerances and behavioral responses to extreme temperatures (ET) across trophic levels have rarely been studied. We examined how a fungal pathogen, Beauv...

Data abstract: the data files described below contains information on larval body size traits and stress tolerance traits obtained using contrasting methods (manual and automated). The species investigated are black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens) and houseflies (Musca domestica). Larval body size is estimated using manual weighing and imaging an...

Within ecophysiological and genetic studies on insects, morphological and physiological traits are commonly assessed and phenotypes are typically obtained from manual measurements on numerous individuals. Manual observations are, however, time consuming, can introduce observer bias and are prone to human error. Here, we contrast results obtained fr...

Temperatures in the Arctic are increasing at a faster pace than at lower latitudes resulting in range expansion of boreal species. In Greenland, the warming also drives accelerating melt of the Greenland Ice Sheet resulting in more meltwater entering Greenland fjords in summer. Our aim was to determine if increasing summer temperatures combined wit...

Accurately phenotyping numerous test subjects is essential for most experimental research. Collecting such data can be tedious or time-consuming, and can be biased or limited by manual observations. The thermal tolerance of small ectotherms is a good example of this type of phenotypic data, and it is widely used to investigate thermal adaptation, a...

The quality of biological control agents used in augmentative releases may be affected by rearing conditions due to inbreeding or laboratory adaptation, or to phenotypic effects of the rearing environment. We hypothesized that individuals from a wild population would be in better body condition and kill more prey than individuals from a commerciall...

Current quality control of mass-reared biological control agents (BCAs) is usually performed in the laboratory and often fails to include behavioural aspects of the BCAs. As a result, the use of efficacy measurements determined solely under laboratory conditions to predict field efficacy can be questioned. In this study, microcosms were designed to...

The performance of biological control agents (BCAs) in outdoor crops is strongly regulated by ambient temperature. Understanding the thermal biology of BCAs and manipulating their thermal performance could improve biological control efficacy. In this study, the effects of temperature on several life history parameters (longevity, fecundity, develop...

To date, behavioural responses and their role in thermal adaptation have largely been overlooked in small ectotherms. Here, we measure reproductive output using four adult acclimation temperatures in Drosophila melanogaster and quantify egg-laying at restricted temperatures (thermal capacity) and across a thermal gradient (thermal preference). We d...

Organisms are exposed to temperatures that vary, for example on diurnal and seasonal time scales. Thus, the ability to behaviorally and/or physiologically respond to variation in temperatures is a fundamental requirement for long-term persistence. Studies on thermal biology in ectotherms are typically performed under constant laboratory conditions,...

Cold exposure depolarizes cells in insects due to a reduced electrogenic ion transport and a gradual increase in extracellular [K ⁺ ]. Cold-induced depolarization is linked to cold injury in chill-susceptible insects, and the locust, Locusta migratoria, has been shown to improve cold tolerance following cold-acclimation through depolarization resis...

Estimates of lower thermal limits are widely used to infer sensitivity to climate variability, local adaptation and adaptive acclimation responses in ectotherms. These inferences build on the ecological relevance of the tolerance estimates and assume that estimates can be extrapolated to relevant conditions. Methodological effects for upper thermal...

We studied the food quality of the aphid Rhopalosiphum padi to the pirate bug Orius majusculus using Ephestia eggs as high‐quality comparison prey. Several performance parameters were tested on individuals that had been reared and maintained on each of the two single‐prey diets or on a mixed diet. All fitness parameters were lower in individuals fe...

Ectotherms can use microclimatic variation and behavioral thermoregulation to cope with unfavorable environmental temperatures. However, relatively little is known about how and if thermoregulatory behavior is used across life stages in small ectothermic insects. Here we investigate differences between three specialized Drosophila species from temp...

Critical thermal limits are important ecological parameters for studying thermal biology and for modelling species' distributions under current and changing climatic conditions (including predicting the risk of extinction for species from future warming). However, estimates of the critical thermal limits are biased by the choice of assay and assay...

Generalist predators potentially have access to a wide array of prey, but it is little studied how experience with specific prey affects preference for this prey. In particular, it is unknown how experience with pest prey affects predator foraging decisions in cases where the pest is nutritious but protected by a repelling, potentially deadly defen...

Heat tolerance increases at higher acclimation temperatures in D. melanogaster, but not in D. subobscura. The two species represent separate lineages of the subgenus Sophophora of Drosophila with contrasting tropical African and temperate Palearctic evolutionary histories. D. melanogaster has five copies of the inducible hsp70 gene distributed in t...

The thermal biology of ectotherms is often used to infer species' responses to changes in temperature. It is often proposed that temperate species are more cold-tolerant, less heat-tolerant, more plastic, have broader thermal performance curves (TPCs) and lower optimal temperatures when compared to tropical species. However, relatively little empir...

Soil living mites have large potential as biocontrol agents against soil-dwelling pests, but little is known about their ecological and ecophysiological responses to cold. We investigated the interactive effects of acclimation temperature and time on cold tolerance in the laelapid mite Gaeolaelaps aculeifer Canestrini after exposure to 5, 10, 15, o...

Temperature influences biological processes of ectotherms including ecological interactions, but interaction strengths may depend on species‐specific traits. Furthermore, ectotherms acclimate to prevailing thermal conditions by adjusting physiological parameters, which often implies costs to other fitness‐related parameters. Both predators and prey...

For over a century, the hypothesis of temperature compensation, the maintenance of similar biological rates in species from different thermal environments, has remained controversial. An alternative idea, that fitness is greater at higher temperatures (the thermodynamic effect), has gained increasing traction. This alternative hypothesis is also be...

Most studies on consequences of environmental change focus on evolutionary and phenotypic plastic responses, but parental effects represent an additional mechanism by which organisms respond to their local environment. Parental effects can be adaptive if they enhance offsprings ability to cope with environments experienced by their parents, but can...

Heat tolerance is commonly assessed as the critical thermal maximum (CTmax) using the dynamic method exposing organisms to a gradually increasing (ramping) temperature until organisms fall into a coma. The CTmax estimate is dependent on the ramping rate, with decreased rates leading to longer treatments and ultimately lower CTmax estimates. There i...

Predatory arthropods are increasingly used in biological control of insect pests. For this purpose, control agents are produced commercially in large quantities for release in crops. The production stocks, however, may have undergone numerous population bottlenecks and may have been exposed to artificial selection pressures in the production facili...

Ectothermic animals like fishes are extremely dependent on temperature, as they are not able to change body temperature physiologically. When populations are found in isolated water bodies such as small lakes they will have to respond to stressful high temperatures by behavioral avoidance, phenotypic plasticity or microevolutionary change. We analy...

Climatic conditions can be very heterogeneous even over small geographic scales, and are believed to be major determinants of the abundance and distribution of species and populations. Organisms are expected to evolve in response to the frequency and magnitude of local thermal extremes, resulting in local adaptation. Using replicate yellow dung fly...

For over a century, temperature compensation (maintenance of biological rates with changing temperatures) has remained controversial. An alternative idea, that fitness is greater at higher temperatures (the thermodynamic effect), has gained increasing traction, and is being used to understand large-scale biodiversity responses to environmental chan...

Large comparative studies in animal ecology, physiology and evolution often use animals reared in the laboratory for many generations; however, the relevance of these studies hinges on the assumption that laboratory populations are still representative for their wild living conspecifics. In this study, we investigate whether laboratory-maintained a...

The butterfly Pieris rapae is widespread and is found even in extreme cold environments such as central Yakutia (Far East of Russian Federation). Prior studies show that in areas with a mild climate (such as Estonia) the P. rapae supercools to -25.8°C and is sensitive to freezing. Almost nothing was known about how the insect survives extremely col...

Knowledge about the consequences of Arctic warming for marine biogeography re- mains limited. Mytilus mussels play a key ecological role in the littoral zone, and they are expected to be sensitive to climate change. Here we used a space-for-time approach as a first attempt to infer the coupling between climate warming and population structure and a...

Most research on thermal adaptation of ectotherms is based on experiments performed at constant temperatures. However, for short-lived insects daily fluctuations of temperature could be an important environmental parameter involved in evolutionary adaptation to thermal heterogeneity. In this study we investigated the mechanisms underlying evolution...

Means and variances of the environmental thermal regime play an important role in determining the fitness of terrestrial ectotherms. Adaptive phenotypic responses induced by heterogeneous temperatures have been shown to be mediated by molecular pathways independent of the classic heat shock responses, however, an in-depth understanding of plasticit...

Cold sterilisation may be supplemented with elevated CO2 (hypercapnia) to increase pest mortality however, in some cases, such treatment combinations have generated unexpected high levels of pest survival. Consequently, determining the mechanistic basis of potential interactions or any cross resistance between CO2 and low temperature stress is crit...

While single stress responses are fairly well researched, multiple, interactive stress responses are not -despite the obvious importance thereof. Here, using D. melanogaster, we investigated the effects of simultaneous exposures to low O2 (hypoxia) and varying thermal conditions on mortality rates, estimates of thermal tolerance and the transcripto...

This proceedings contains papers dealing with issues affecting biological control, particularly pertaining to the use of parasitoids and predators as biological control agents. This includes all approaches to biological control: conservation, augmentation, and importation of natural enemy species for the control of arthropod targets, as well as oth...

Ecotherms adjust their physiology to environmental temperatures. Long-term exposures to heat or cold typically induce acclimation responses that generate directional, but reversible shifts in thermal tolerance and performance. However, less is known about how short exposure in different life stages will affect the adult phenotype. In the present st...

Ectotherms respond to their thermal environments by physiological acclimation, which increases tolerance to thermal extremes and may increase field performance. However, acclimation often has costs, and increased performance in some traits may be associated with reduced performance in other traits due to trade-offs. We investigated effects of therm...

Mechanistic trade-offs between traits under selection can shape and constrain evolutionary adaptation to environmental stressors. However, our knowledge of the quantitative and qualitative overlap in the molecular machinery among stress tolerance traits is highly restricted by the challenges of comparing and interpreting data between separate studi...

Adaptation of natural populations to variable environmental conditions may occur by changes in trait means and/or in the levels of plasticity. Theory predicts that environmental heterogeneity favors plasticity of adaptive traits. Here we investigated the performance in several traits of three sympatric Drosophila species freshly collected in two en...

We studied the water balance, body fl uid osmolality and survival of the oribatid mite, Pergalumna nervosa, when exposed to drought in fi eld and laboratory experiments. In a replicated fi eld experiment we artifi cially lowered the soil water content by putting roofs over selected plots, which reduced soil water potential to levels well below the...

We studied the water balance, body fl uid osmolality and survival of the oribatid mite, Pergalumna nervosa, when exposed to drought in fi eld and laboratory experiments. In a replicated fi eld experiment we artifi cially lowered the soil water content by putting roofs over selected plots, which reduced soil water potential to levels well below the...

Arthropods form a major part of the terrestrial species diversity in the Arctic, and are particularly sensitive to temporal changes in the abiotic environment. It is assumed that most Arctic arthropods are habitat generalists and that their diversity patterns exhibit low spatial variation. The empirical basis for this assumption, however, is weak....

Background Insects are renowned for their ability to survive anoxia. Anoxia tolerance may be enhanced during chilling through metabolic suppression. AimsHere, the metabolomic response of insects to anoxia, both with and without chilling, for different durations (12–36 h) was examined to assess the potential cross-tolerance mechanisms. ResultsChilli...

Thermal limits of ectotherms have been studied extensively and are believed to be evolutionarily constrained, leaving ectotherms at risk under future climate change. Phenotypic plasticity may extend the thermal limits, but we lack detailed characterizations of thermal limit reaction norms as well as an understanding of the interspecific variation i...

Insect cold tolerance depends on their ability to withstand or repair perturbations in cellular homeostasis caused by low temperature stress. Decreased oxygen availability (hypoxia) can interact with low temperature tolerance, often improving insect survival. One mechanism proposed for such responses is that whole-animal cold tolerance is set by a...

In this study, we evaluated different methods based on DNA and RNA analysis to describe effects of pesticides on the soil ecosystem. In brief, short-term effects of pesticides was investigated on soil microorganisms by measuring the level of ammonia monoxygenase gene (amoA) transcription in soil, and on soil Collembola. The long term effects on com...

Terrestrial ectotherms are challenged by variation in both mean and variance of temperature. Phenotypic plasticity (thermal acclimation) might mitigate adverse effects, however, we lack a fundamental understanding of the molecular mechanisms of thermal acclimation and how they are affected by fluctuating temperature. Here we investigated the effect...