Molecules empowering animals to sense and respond to temperature in changing environments

•Genetic models bring new insights on thermosensation and thermal acclimation.•Other thermosensory proteins exist alongside the well-known thermoTRP channels.•New thermoreceptor candidates include ionotropic and metabotropic receptors.•Thermal acclimation depends on short and long-term adaptation in thermosensory neurons.•Kinases and transcriptional regulation are linked to thermal acclimation in vivo.

Adapting behavior to thermal cues is essential for animal growth and survival. Indeed, each and every biological and biochemical process is profoundly affected by temperature and its extremes can cause irreversible damage. Hence, animals have developed thermotransduction mechanisms to detect and encode thermal information in the nervous system and acclimation mechanisms to finely tune their response over different timescales. While temperature-gated TRP channels are the best described class of temperature sensors, recent studies highlight many new candidates, including ionotropic and metabotropic receptors. Here, we review recent findings in vertebrate and invertebrate models, which highlight and substantiate the role of new candidate molecular thermometers and reveal intracellular signaling mechanisms implicated in thermal acclimation at the behavioral and cellular levels.