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How can small changes in temperature determine which competing Drosophila species survives?

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Diagram showing energy flow in a food chain from a tree to a caterpillar, then to a bird, and finally to microbes, with red arrows illustrating energy transfer and heat loss at each stage. — community ecology Energy transfer and heat loss along a food chain.

In the context of community ecology, the outcome of competition between Drosophila species is highly sensitive to the physical environment.

Experiments have demonstrated that when all other variables are held constant, even small variations in temperature can determine which species outcompetes the other. Because these environmental shifts can dictate the winner of local competition, the long-term regional coexistence of competing species often depends on the presence of multiple populations distributed across a variety of environments throughout a region.1