Hi Bonnie, 78-80 degrees is fine for developing a starter, and you may even see things happen a little faster because of your warmer temperatures. However, once your starter is fully developed, maintaining your starter at room temperature may be a bit more challenging under warmer conditions. This is because ideally you want to replenish (feed) your starter when it's at its peak of rising, or just beginning to fall. Allowing the starter to fall significantly between feedings tends to lead to sluggish yeast. Since your starter is likely to ripen faster when its warm, this could result in 3-4 feedings a day, which gets a little crazy!

To slow down the ripening process and line up your twice a day feedings closer to the peak, you can always reduce the percentage of starter you're feeding. This is because it takes longer for fewer starter organisms to consume and ferment a relatively larger meal. For example, our sourdough starter maintenance routine calls for a 1:1:1 ratio (starter:water:flour, by weight), which generally works well under cooler conditions. When its warm you may want to try something more like 1:3:3, or even 1:4:4. For our routine a 1:4:4 feeding would look like: 28g starter + 113g water + 113g flour. Note that you're not using up more flour to offer your starter a larger feeding, just reducing the amount of starter relative to the water and flour you're feeding it. 

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