The Atlas day gecko, Quedenfeldtia moerens, a Moroccan endemic lizard, is strictly diurnal and widely distributed across the dry Atlas Mountains. We quantified thermoregulation in adult males and adult females during their active season in the L’kest Mountain at 1300 m a.s.l., Anti-Atlas region of Morocco. The operative temperatures and air temperatures were sampled using data-loggers in the field from 2016 to 2018. Body temperatures of active lizards and substrate temperatures in the field were simultaneously measured. Finally, we measured preferred body temperatures (Tset) in a laboratory thermal gradient for 24 adult geckos. Mean Tset was 33.3 ± 0.3°C, with the mean 25% and 75% quartiles being 32.3 ± 0.3°C and 34.6 ± 0.3°C, respectively. Active lizards rarely reached their Tset range from March to June, but spent most of the day within Tset in July and August. Our study suggests that Q. moerens have higher Tset than its congeneric Q. trachyblepharus living at high altitude. Likewise, thermoregulatory effectiveness of Q. moerens showed an increase from spring to summer while it was the opposite for Q. trachyblepharus.
Gut passage time (GPT), a key factor in digestive procedure, is of pivotal importance for digestion. Several parameters may affect GPT, such as temperature, length of gastrointestinal tract and body size. Here, we examine the influence of prey weight and prey species on GPT in the endemic diurnal gecko Quedenfeldtia moerens, from the Anti-Atlas Mountains in central Morocco. We used two prey species, house crickets (Acheta domesticus, AD) and mealworms (Tenebrio molitor, TM). Lizards were fed with the larval stage of TM and nymphs of AD. The influence of prey weight and prey species was tested at a constant temperature. We used three weight classes of each prey species to test the influence of prey weight on GPT. Our results showed that prey species affected GPT in a distinct way: mealworms induced a longer gut passage time compared to house crickets. Moreover, GPT increased with the increasing weight of prey for both prey species. Our finding demonstrates that the effect of prey species and prey weight affect digestion and thus should be better clarified in future studies.
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