Got just five minutes to spare? Listen to our brand new podcast! In this episode, we interview Cassandra Konecny and Graham Brownlee about their recent publication “Adapting a propane turkey fryer to manipulate temperature in aquatic environments”.

As the likelihood of extreme temperatures increases due to climate change, there is a growing need to better understand the potential impacts of altered thermal regimes on biodiversity and ecosystem function. However, methods for manipulation of temperatures in the field are often costly or unable to produce ecologically relevant changes in temperature.

In their new Practical Tools article, Konecny et al. present a low-cost, easily assembled and readily customisable thermal manipulation system for tide pools or other small bodies of water—the Seaside Array for Understanding Thermal Effects (SAUTE)—and demonstrate its ability to effectively alter the temperature in tide pools.

Listen to this great interview with the authors to find out more about the method, the challenges that arose along the way and its potential applications.