Evolutionary adaptation to thermosensation

•We describe tuning of temperature receptors in cold-blooded and warm-blooded animals.•Somatosensory system interacts with the environment to support survival.•Non-standard animal models are essential to study evolution of somatosensation.

Organisms continuously evolve to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Chief among these are daily and seasonal temperature fluctuations. Relatively small in terms of real physical values, temperature fluctuations of just a few degrees can profoundly affect organismal functions. In vertebrates, temperature is detected by primary afferents of somatosensory neurons, which express thermo-gated ion channels. Most of our knowledge about temperature receptors comes from seminal studies in mice and rats. Recent work uncovered thermosensory mechanisms in other vertebrates, shedding light onto the diversity of thermosensory adaptations. Here, we summarize molecular mechanisms of thermosensation in different species and discuss the need to use the standard laboratory rodents and non-standard species side-by-side in order to understand fundamental principles of somatosensation.