Figure 3.

Guidelines for future studies. With this paper, we aim at proposing guidelines for future studies trying to understand the responses of ectotherms to changes in their temperature and water environment. We identified three levels of the integration of thermo‐hydroregulation processes that need critical experimental and empirical deepening. The first task would be to better disentangle the environmental temperature and water implications on microclimate properties. In the environment, a wet habitat is also often cooler than a dry one. Future studies should pay attention to be able to have all combinations of water and thermal environments or focus on other variables such as the biophysics of the microhabitat (evaporative water losses, operative temperature). A second task is to better understand the functional responses of ectotherms to these habitats. Physiological and behavioral responses to temperature are quite well‐known, but responses to water availability are still overlooked. We should now ask what mechanisms are common to thermoregulation and hydroregulation, and also investigate their plasticity and flexibility that could be critical in understanding organism responses to global changes. Finally, the last task aims at highlighting thermo‐hydroregulation performance curves in ectotherms taxa as they were only studied in anurans until now. Longer‐term performance studies are also needed to understand fitness consequences of environmental changes on ectotherms