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It has long been known that the outcome of species interactions depends on the environmental context in which they occur. Climate change research has sparked a renewed interest in context-dependent species interactions because rapidly changing abiotic environments will cause species interactions to occur in novel contexts and researchers must incorporate this in their predictions of species’ responses to climate change. Here, we argue that predicting how the environment will alter the outcome of species interactions requires an integrative biology approach that focuses on the traits, mechanisms, and processes that bridge disciplines such as physiology, biomechanics, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Specifically, we advocate for quantifying how species differ in their tolerance and performance to both environmental challenges independent of species interactions, and in interactions with other species as a function of the environment. Such an approach increases our understanding of the mechanisms underlying outcomes of species interactions across different environmental contexts. This understanding will help determine how the outcome of species interactions affects the relative abundance and distribution of the interacting species in nature. A general theme that emerges from this perspective is that species are unable to maintain high levels of performance across different environmental contexts because of trade-offs between physiological tolerance to environmental challenges and performance in species interactions. Thus, an integrative biology paradigm that focuses on the trade-offs across environments, the physiological mechanisms involved, and how the ecological context impacts the outcome of species interactions provides a stronger framework to understand why species interactions are context dependent.

Adaptive plasticity in thermal tolerance traits may buffer organisms against changing temperatures, making such responses of particular interest in the face of global climate change. Although population variation is integral to the evolvability of this trait, many studies inferring proxies of physiological vulnerability from thermal tolerance traits extrapolate data from one or a few populations to represent the species. Estimates of physiological vulnerability can be further complicated by methodological effects associated with experimental design. We evaluated how populations varied in their acclimation capacity (i.e., the magnitude of plasticity) for critical thermal maximum (CTmax) in two species of tailed frogs (Ascaphidae), cold‐stream specialists. We used the estimates of acclimation capacity to infer physiological vulnerability to future warming. We performed CTmax experiments on tadpoles from 14 populations using a fully factorial experimental design of two holding temperatures (8 and 15°C) and two experimental starting temperatures (8 and 15°C). This design allowed us to investigate the acute effects of transferring organisms from one holding temperature to a different experimental starting temperature, as well as fully acclimated responses by using the same holding and starting temperature. We found that most populations exhibited beneficial acclimation, where CTmax was higher in tadpoles held at a warmer temperature, but populations varied markedly in the magnitude of the response and the inferred physiological vulnerability to future warming. We also found that the response of transferring organisms to different starting temperatures varied substantially among populations, although accounting for acute effects did not greatly alter estimates of physiological vulnerability at the species level or for most populations. These results underscore the importance of sampling widely among populations when inferring physiological vulnerability, as population variation in acclimation capacity and thermal sensitivity may be critical when assessing vulnerability to future warming.

Vulnerability to warming is often assessed using short‐term metrics such as the critical thermal maximum (CT_MAX), which represents an organism's ability to survive extreme heat. However, the long‐term effects of sub‐lethal warming are an essential link to fitness in the wild, and these effects are not adequately captured by metrics like CT_MAX.

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Climate change is altering conditions in high‐elevation streams worldwide, with largely unknown effects on resident communities of aquatic insects. Here, we review the challenges of climate change for high‐elevation aquatic insects and how they may respond, focusing on current gaps in knowledge. Understanding current effects and predicting future impacts will depend on progress in three areas. First, we need better descriptions of the multivariate physical challenges and interactions among challenges in high‐elevation streams, which include low but rising temperatures, low oxygen supply and increasing oxygen demand, high and rising exposure to ultraviolet radiation, low ionic strength, and variable but shifting flow regimes. These factors are often studied in isolation even though they covary in nature and interact in space and time. Second, we need a better mechanistic understanding of how physical conditions in streams drive the performance of individual insects. Environment‐performance links are mediated by physiology and behavior, which are poorly known in high‐elevation taxa. Third, we need to define the scope and importance of potential responses across levels of biological organization. Short‐term responses are defined by the tolerances of individuals, their capacities to perform adequately across a range of conditions, and behaviors used to exploit local, fine‐scale variation in abiotic factors. Longer term responses to climate change, however, may include individual plasticity and evolution of populations. Whether high‐elevation aquatic insects can mitigate climatic risks via these pathways is largely unknown.