Temperature tolerance of organisms

[lpetrich]

I first discuss  Boiling frog, that if one heats a frog slowly, it will become accustomed to the heat and not jump away. That was more-or-less hinted at by some work in the late nineteenth century, but recent researchers into amphibian temperature tolerance have found that to be just plain false. When a frog is heated enough, it will try to jump away, even if it was heated very slowly. In fact, heating the animals slowly is a good way to get a good number for temperature tolerance.

A better example of what this supposedly illustrates is removing a bandage. It's often less painful to remove them slowly than to remove them quickly. Or else being jabbed by a needle.

I'll now turn to the main subject.

Since every known organism needs liquid water to metabolize and grow and reproduce, it would seem that the lower limit of temperature is set by the freezing point of water, 0 C. Indeed, freezing is deadly to many organisms. Ice crystals forming inside of cells will damage them beyond viability. But many organisms have ways around that problem.

One of them is antifreeze. Many organisms, including various fish, insects, plants, fungi, and bacteria, make antifreeze proteins. Living organisms need antifreeze to survive in the cold describes some research into these proteins. Lowest temperature for life discovered noting A Low Temperature Limit for Life on Earth proposes -20 C as a lower limit for organisms metabolizing. But antifreezes have an additional benefit. They can keep water from crystallizing as it freezes, making it an amorphous, glassy solid, and keeping cell structures intact. Thus, organisms can go into suspended animation rather than dying.

Suspended animation (cryptobiosis) can also be done by drying (anhydrobiosis), and that also enables survival at low temperatures.

 

[steve_bank]

Some frogs have a natural antifreeze that allows them to freeze and thaw out.

 

[Jobar]

I recently watched a YT video on Snowball Earth; at about 27:30 there's a discussion of how bacteria managed to survive for millions of years when Earth was plunged into a major episode of global cooling, so extreme that the oceans froze all the way to the equator. Very relevant to this question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOLbE8frMrM

 

[lpetrich]

I'll now go in the opposite direction -- what maximum temperature.

Life at High Temperatures - Up the Temperature Gradient is a page in a site on the hot springs of Yellowstone Park and their inhabitants. It contains a table of maximum temperatures for several groups of organisms.

From that table, fish have a maximum temperature of 38 C. This is odd, since warm-blooded vertebrates have body temperatures of around 37 C (human) - 41 C (chicken). Fish typically having a lower maximum temperature may be due to their living in water, something that is usually much colder.

Warm-bloodedness itself likely evolved for resistance to disease organisms, something that likely also explains fevers. So being warm-blooded (homeothermic, endothermic) is sort of like having a permanent fever.

Arthropods do better. Insects are at 45 - 50 C, and ostracod crustaceans at 49 - 50 C. Pest control that's too hot for bugs to handle | New Scientist describes a room heater that heats room air up to 56 C. That was described as being enough to kill all insects. That is likely true of active insects, because suspended animation may enable tolerance of higher temperatures.

Among plants, vascular plants go up to 45 C mosses up to 50 C, and algae up to 55 - 60 C. Llike for this one-celled red alga: The upper temperature limit of Cyanidium caldarium | SpringerLink.

Fungi go up to 60 - 62 C and protozoans up to 56 C.

So eukaryotes max out at around 60 C. I next turn to prokaryotes.

Cyanobacteria and other photosynthetic bacteria go up to 70 - 73 C.
Heterotrophic ones: 90 C.
Methane-producing archaea: 110 C.
Sulfur-using archaea: 115 C.

The champion is an organism called  Strain 121, from a temperature where it has been observed to grow in.

The highest temperatures are above the boiling point of water at sea level, but the deeper parts of the oceans supply enough pressure to keep water liquid at 121 C and more.

For more, see  Thermophile (optimal growth temperature more than 50 C) and  Hyperthermophile (optimal growth temperature more than 80 C). For the opposite extreme, see  Psychrophile (can grow and reproduce in less than 10 C without being warm-blooded). For additional hostile environments that organisms can survive, see  Extremophile

 

[fast]

How about most variant? Anything that not just survives but thrives at both ends and inbetween?

 

[steve_bank]

Hydro thermal vets- black smokers/ Thriving biological communities at high temp. Max recorded temp 407c. Tube worms living at 80c. There is also bacteria that thrive in volcanic hot springs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent#Biological_communities

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Under enough pressure the freezing and boiling points alter. IIRC some of the deep sea volcanic vent life can survive temperatures above boiling this way.

 

[skepticalbip]

Under enough pressure the freezing and boiling points alter. IIRC some of the deep sea volcanic vent life can survive temperatures above boiling this way.

Well, above 100 degrees C but not above the boiling point at the pressure at that depth. The boiling point of water at several atmospheres pressure is considerably above 100C just as water will boil at room temperature if the pressure is reduced sufficiently.

 

[phands]

There is a great Scottish author called Christopher Brookmyre. One of his best books is called "Boiling A Frog". The book's foreword is...

Frogs are poikilothermic.
This means that if you place a frog in a pan of cold water and gradually increase the temperature, the frog will not notice and will eventually be cooked.
The author of this book in no way condones the boiling of innocent amphibians.
Not while there's a perfectly good kitten about, anyway.

Damn good and darkly comic book.

 

[skepticalbip]

Some frogs have a natural antifreeze that allows them to freeze and thaw out.

I can confirm this because of actual experimentation. I had heard this when I was a kid of about ten. Always skeptical and curious, I determined to test it. I caught a frog and put it in the freezer. After the little sucker was frozen solid I took him out and placed him on the back porch to thaw. He thawed and hopped away. Further experimentation was stopped by my mother after she found the little frozen blob of frog piss in her freezer.

 

[fast]

Ya know, some frog legs sounds good right about now. Here's a culinary fun fact; if you take frog legs and throw 'em into the frying pan, guess what they'll do as they begin to get hot? Sizzle, but what's more (the fascinating part) is if you sprinkle salt on them, what'll they'll do next is (or what'll happen, for the pedants), they will JUMP about. Some will literally jump out of the pan. Yeah, like onto the floor. And continue jumping! Nothing like chasing your dinner as you're cooking it, har har.

 

[steve_bank]

Some frogs have a natural antifreeze that allows them to freeze and thaw out.

I can confirm this because of actual experimentation. I had heard this when I was a kid of about ten. Always skeptical and curious, I determined to test it. I caught a frog and put it in the freezer. After the little sucker was frozen solid I took him out and placed him on the back porch to thaw. He thawed and hopped away. Further experimentation was stopped by my mother after she found the little frozen blob of frog piss in her freezer.

I saw it on a show showing frogs frozen. The antifreeze prevents crystals forming in the cells as I recall. If human vells are frozen and thawed they tend to rupture..

There are fish yjay in a drought burrow into mud, cover themselves with a mucous that hardens, and can hibernate for years.

 

[lpetrich]

How about most variant? Anything that not just survives but thrives at both ends and inbetween?

Such an organism will be rather hard to find. Most organisms do well in only a subset of that range, like a range of 30 C or less.

The Upper Temperature Limit for Eukaryotic Organisms

An upper temperature limit near 60° for eukaryotic organisms is documented by results of a systematic search for fungi able to grow at higher temperatures. Samples from hot springs, thermal soils, self-heating coal waste piles, and other natural and man-made heated habitats did not yield fungi when enrichments were done at 62°, whereas fungi able to grow at 55-60° can be readily isolated from such habitats. Earlier work had shown that eukaryotic algae are also absent from environments with temperatures above 55-60°. It is suggested that the failure of eukaryotes to evolve members able to grow at higher temperatures is due to their inability to form organellar membranes that are both thermostable and functional.

How far can an organism go?

Biomolecular stability and life at high temperatures. - PubMed - NCBI "It is not clear what the upper temperature limit for life is, or what specific factors will set this limit, but it is generally assumed that the limit will be dictated by molecular instability." Then discussing various stabilization mechanisms found in organisms that inhabit the highest temperatures.

Prediction of the Maximum Temperature for Life Based on the Stability of Metabolites to Decomposition in Water
Abstract:

The components of life must survive in a cell long enough to perform their function in that cell. Because the rate of attack by water increases with temperature, we can, in principle, predict a maximum temperature above which an active terrestrial metabolism cannot function by analysis of the decomposition rates of the components of life, and comparison of those rates with the metabolites’ minimum metabolic half-lives. The present study is a first step in this direction, providing an analytical framework and method, and analyzing the stability of 63 small molecule metabolites based on literature data. Assuming that attack by water follows a first order rate equation, we extracted decomposition rate constants from literature data and estimated their statistical reliability. The resulting rate equations were then used to give a measure of confidence in the half-life of the metabolite concerned at different temperatures. There is little reliable data on metabolite decomposition or hydrolysis rates in the literature, the data is mostly confined to a small number of classes of chemicals, and the data available are sometimes mutually contradictory because of varying reaction conditions. However, a preliminary analysis suggests that terrestrial biochemistry is limited to environments below ~150–180 °C. We comment briefly on why pressure is likely to have a small effect on this.

This limit was derived for relatively small molecules, like building blocks of larger ones. Though such large ones as proteins and nucleic acids are also vulnerable to disintegration by this mechanism, the authors did not address this "complex" question.

The authors are also confident that "The upper limit is determined by the stability of the components of life."

The thermal limits to life on Earth | International Journal of Astrobiology | Cambridge Core
Abstract:

Living organisms on Earth are characterized by three necessary features: a set of internal instructions encoded in DNA (software), a suite of proteins and associated macromolecules providing a boundary and internal structure (hardware), and a flux of energy. In addition, they replicate themselves through reproduction, a process that renders evolutionary change inevitable in a resource-limited world. Temperature has a profound effect on all of these features, and yet life is sufficiently adaptable to be found almost everywhere water is liquid. The thermal limits to survival are well documented for many types of organisms, but the thermal limits to completion of the life cycle are much more difficult to establish, especially for organisms that inhabit thermally variable environments. Current data suggest that the thermal limits to completion of the life cycle differ between the three major domains of life, bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes. At the very highest temperatures only archaea are found with the current high-temperature limit for growth being 122 °C. Bacteria can grow up to 100 °C, but no eukaryote appears to be able to complete its life cycle above ∼60 °C and most not above 40 °C. The lower thermal limit for growth in bacteria, archaea, unicellular eukaryotes where ice is present appears to be set by vitrification of the cell interior, and lies at ∼−20 °C. Lichens appear to be able to grow down to ∼−10 °C. Higher plants and invertebrates living at high latitudes can survive down to ∼−70 °C, but the lower limit for completion of the life cycle in multicellular organisms appears to be ∼−2 °C.

The aforementioned Strain 121 is of Geogemma barossii, and it is now beaten by a strain of Methanopyrus kandleri, which was discovered to grow at 122 C.

These organisms are all in Archaea, and the member of Bacteria (Eubacteria) with the highest growth temperature is Geothermobacterium ferrireducens at around 100 C.

Eukaryotes are more complicated, and their maximum growth temperatures are listed in this table:

• One-celled algae: 60 C (red alga Cyanidium caldarium)
• Yeasts: 60 - 62 C
• Lichens: ~ 45 C
• Macroalgae: ~ 45 C
• Mosses: 50 C
• Angiosperms: 65 C (panic grass Dichanthelium lanuginosum in association with fungus Curvularia protuberata and a fungus virus)
• Land invertebrates: 60 C (survival: 70 C) (nematodes in compost heaps)
• Freshwater invertebrates: 46 C (crustaceans and mollusks living alongside desert pupfish)
• Marine invertebrates: >42 C (polychaete Alvinella pompeiana from hydrothermal vents)
• Ectothermic (cold-blooded) vertebrates: 46 C (desert pupfish (Cyprinodon spp.))
• Endothermic (warm-blooded) vertebrates: (internally maintained at around 40 C)

 

[Jobar]

I would guess that there are forms of life around hydrothermal vents which produce eggs or spores that can survive long periods at temps near freezing; when an active vent stops erupting, they will die, but will first generate cells that drift in deep ocean currents like thistledown in air. Some of those will encounter new vents and thus preserve the species. So, though I don't claim to know it for a fact, I would bet that the organism(s) able to survive the widest spread of temperatures are found around deep-ocean hydrothermal vents.

 

[steve_bank]

Chemical reaction rates vary with temperature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrhenius_equation

The equation applied to a plant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_blossom_front

 

[lpetrich]

I would guess that there are forms of life around hydrothermal vents which produce eggs or spores that can survive long periods at temps near freezing; when an active vent stops erupting, they will die, but will first generate cells that drift in deep ocean currents like thistledown in air. ...

Or else they will simply slow down. That seems to happen in some cases: Thermophilic bacteria in cool temperate soils: are they metabolically active or continually added by global atmospheric transport? - PubMed - NCBI, Are thermophilic microorganisms active in cold environments? | International Journal of Astrobiology | Cambridge Core

That gives them a very wide range of temperature tolerance.

 

[steve_bank]

NASA dud an experiment. They sent bacteria into space exposed to vacuum and ambient radiation. Th bateria formed a hard shell. Returned to Earth came back to life.

 

[bilby]

There is a great Scottish author called Christopher Brookmyre. One of his best books is called "Boiling A Frog". The book's foreword is...

Frogs are poikilothermic.
This means that if you place a frog in a pan of cold water and gradually increase the temperature, the frog will not notice and will eventually be cooked.
The author of this book in no way condones the boiling of innocent amphibians.
Not while there's a perfectly good kitten about, anyway.

Damn good and darkly comic book.

Love Brookmyre, though he does get a touch gory.

I would recommend 'Not the End of the World' as a starting point for anyone on this board who is interested in reading him.

 

[bilby]

Some frogs have a natural antifreeze that allows them to freeze and thaw out.

I can confirm this because of actual experimentation. I had heard this when I was a kid of about ten. Always skeptical and curious, I determined to test it. I caught a frog and put it in the freezer. After the little sucker was frozen solid I took him out and placed him on the back porch to thaw. He thawed and hopped away. Further experimentation was stopped by my mother after she found the little frozen blob of frog piss in her freezer.

That certainly doesn't work for all amphibians though - the recommended humane way to kill cane toads (Rhinella Marina, formerly Bufo Marinus), a widespread introduced pest in Northern Australia, is to freeze them. Although the rather less humane method of trying to launch them into orbit with a nine iron is more popular.

 

[skepticalbip]

Some frogs have a natural antifreeze that allows them to freeze and thaw out.

I can confirm this because of actual experimentation. I had heard this when I was a kid of about ten. Always skeptical and curious, I determined to test it. I caught a frog and put it in the freezer. After the little sucker was frozen solid I took him out and placed him on the back porch to thaw. He thawed and hopped away. Further experimentation was stopped by my mother after she found the little frozen blob of frog piss in her freezer.

That certainly doesn't work for all amphibians though - the recommended humane way to kill cane toads (Rhinella Marina, formerly Bufo Marinus), a widespread introduced pest in Northern Australia, is to freeze them.

Aussi moms are apparently more understanding than mine. They don't mind frog piss in their freezers?

Although the rather less humane method of trying to launch them into orbit with a nine iron is more popular.

I generally go for distance so have found the woods superior to irons. But it is always advisable to clean the frog splat from the club before it dries.