Marine ecology warms up to theory.

A recent report by O'Connor et al. demonstrates that planktonic larval duration time declines with temperature, as predicted from metabolic theory. This observation enabled the authors to develop a unified model predicting the effects of temperature on planktonic larval duration and, therefore, dispersal potential in the marine environment. These results show metabolic theory to be a unifying ecological principle that bridges the marine and terrestrial divide, helping to address fundamental problems in marine biodiversity and conservation, as well as to understand the response of marine organisms to climate change.