Trends and developments in thermal tolerance: A scientometric research study

Climate action was among one of the main targets for the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (i.e. UN SDG: 13), which is to "take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts". The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is also concurred to improve climate change's mitigation and adaptation strategies along with the SDG's goals. Thermal tolerance has been proposed as one of the possible adaptation strategies for animals affected by anthropogenic effects and excess heat from climate change. However, no scientometrics analysis of thermal tolerance research has been conducted to date. As a result, the goal of this study was to gather information from the literature to determine the current state of thermal tolerance, development trends, and current research. Researchers will be able to better understand the trends and development of the thematic research area of thermal tolerance by using scientometric analysis to generate data on thermal tolerance. For frequency, co-occurrence, co-citation, clustering, and burst analysis, CiteSpace software was used. The scientometric review of thermal tolerance studies from 1970 to 2021 (5243 studies) reveals significant increases in the size of the literature, the frequency of citations, and the hotspots investigated. Susan Lindquist and the Journal of Thermal Biology are the most influential authors and journals, respectively. The most common clusters related to the thematic area of thermal tolerance are oxygen consumption and heat shock protein, with climate change and temperature being one of the most popular keywords. We concluded that, along with the thriving field and climate change issues, thermal tolerance is becoming one of the future research interests. In addition, knowing the current trends and developments of thermal tolerance in aquatic species is important for various stakeholders.