Table 1.

Tempo and mode of evolution of upper and lower thermal tolerances of ectothermic species, endothermic species, terrestrial plants and plants and algae.

Taxa	Metric	n	TEMPO (σ²)	MODE (−log α)	LnLik OU	LnLik BM	LnLik WN
Ectotherms	Upper	547	0.784 ± 0.225	−0.983 ± 0.113	−1542.68 ± 42.711	−1577.036 ± 57.495	−1787.285 ± 0
	Lower	335	1.224 ± 0.385	−1.126 ± 0.112	−1007.873 ± 30.696	−1042.516 ± 41.797	−1098.014 ± 0
Endotherms	Upper	314	0.593 ± 0.153	−1.262 ± 0.029	−817.683 ± 10.032	−885.844 ± 23.664	−830.211 ± 0
	Lower	495	2.067 ± 0.182	−1.029 ± 0.05	−1598.035 ± 9.283	−1666.438 ± 19.03	−1655.963 ± 0
Plants	Upper	32	0.675 ± 0.171	−0.835 ± 0.084	−103.014 ± 0.486	−106.764 ± 1.841	−104.089 ± 0
	Lower	71	1.183 ± 0.353	−0.494 ± 0.237	−235.901 ± 4.283	−241.399 ± 7.372	−250.602 ± 0
Plants & Algae	Upper	81	1.366 ± 0.366	−0.56 ± 0.131	−260.011 ± 6.033	−265.575 ± 7.898	−328.995 ± 0
	Lower	77	1.3 ± 0.355	−0.659 ± 0.209	−261.85 ± 3.793	−269.043 ± 7.242	−276.223 ± 0

The tempo measures the rate of thermal tolerance evolution (in °C Mya⁻¹), and the mode informs of the likelihood within which a given model of evolution fits the data (for details, see Supplementary Note 2). Note that n (the number of species within each grouping) varies according to the number of taxa for which there are records in GlobTherm and which are included in the phylogenetic hypothesis used for analyses⁵⁹. The phylogenetic hypothesis are Ornstein Uhlenbeck (OU), Brownian Motion (BM) or White Noise (WN) models. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.

LnLik log-likelihood of model.