I do believe you may be on to something here! As long as the daisy is well watered and the chamber is not too humid, she can cool herself off for a while by evaporative transpiration (call it plant sweat, if you like), but I don't think the scale are so lucky (they are built to conserve moisture, not evaporate it).Indeed they can't, Tim. In fact, with very rare exceptions, only warm-blooded creatures can sweat.
And a big advantage of heating over suffocating, is that reasonably accurate thermometers are *way* cheaper than oxygen sensors.
"No, Mr. Arthropod. I expect you to die!"
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This article on Tree Heat Stress Syndrome says, among many other useful things, that plants start to die from overheating at about 115 F. This would probably be a good target for future treatments.
Also, it occurs to me that, in addition to having a thermometer for the air temperature in the Chamber of Doom, one of those cheap IR thermometers could let you measure the actual leaf temperatures.
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