In reptiles, one aspect of the early environment that impacts development is temperature (termed 'thermal developmental plasticity').  Indeed, the thermal environment during incubation is known to influence morphological, physiological, and behavioral traits, some of which have important consequences for many ecological and evolutionary processes.  Here, we systematically review research into thermal developmental plasticity across reptiles, structured around the key papers and findings that have shaped the field over the past 50 years.  From these papers, we introduce a large database (the 'Reptile Development Database') consisting of 9,773 trait means across 300 studies examining thermal developmental plasticity.  Finally, from our literature synthesis and data exploration, we identify key research themes associated with thermal developmental plasticity, important gaps in empirical research, and demonstrate how future progress can be made through targeted empirical, meta-analytic, and comparative work.
THERM