Fig. 4. The importance of experienced contemporary climate, clade evolutionary age and palaeoclimatic origin in predicting thermal limits.

Variable importance in random forest models fitting the relationships between upper (red) and lower (blue) thermal limits and predictors including palaeoclimatic origin (palaeo-temperature), experienced contemporary climate (current temperature) and clade evolutionary age (age) for a ectotherms, b endotherms, c plants (combing data from aquatic and terrestrial realms). Average model accuracy (R²) is reported for each model subset. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. For source data and sample sizes see Supplementary Table 5 and Supplementary Note 3.