The peak of thermoregulation effectiveness: Thermal biology of the Pyrenean rock lizard, Iberolacerta bonnali (Squamata, Lacertidae)

Ortega, Zaida; Mencía, Abraham; Pérez-Mellado, Valentı́n

doi:10.1016/j.jtherbio.2016.01.005

Cited by 32 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…The low thermal quality of the high elevation sites (NSF and NNF) is unsurprising. Though high elevation sites are exposed to strong winds and higher precipitation levels (Ortega et al ), driving T e below T p and thus inflating

. However the high

of ASP, coupled with the relatively high value of OVR, suggests that altitude is not the only parameter affecting the thermal quality of a habitat.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fine with heat, problems with water: microclimate alters water loss in a thermally adapted insular lizard

Belasen

Brock

et al. 2016

Oikos

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Global change, including habitat isolation and climate change, has both short‐ and long‐term impacts on wildlife populations. For example, genetic drift and inbreeding result in genetic impoverishment in small, isolated populations, while species undergo range shifts or adaptive phenotypic change in response to shifts in environmental temperatures. In this study, we utilize a model system in which Holocene landscape changes have occurred to examine long‐term effects of population isolation. To examine how isolation may constrain responses to climate change, we characterized ecophysiology across land‐bridge island populations of Erhard's wall lizard Podarcis erhardii. We hypothesized that 1) small, isolated populations that are likely genetically depauperate would exhibit lower phenotypic variability; and 2) populations would be adapted to local microhabitat conditions. We compared a population at a low elevation site on the large island of Naxos with two small populations on nearby islets to determine the effects of population fragmentation. We further compared the low elevation Naxos population with two high elevation sites characterized by disparate microclimates to examine the effects of microclimate. To assess the thermal biology and ecophysiological limits of the study species we measured operative body temperatures (Te), field body temperatures (Tb), preferred temperatures (Tp), thermal tolerances (CTmax and CTmin), and evaporative water loss (EWL). Our results indicate that small, isolated populations did not exhibit thermal biology or evaporative water loss, while EWL and thermoregulatory effort varied according to microhabitat characteristics. This study integrates fine‐scale measurements with environmental data to provide a holistic view of the relationships between ecophysiology, fragmentation, and microclimate. Our methods can be applied to other ectotherms to gain a better understanding of potential impacts of global change on natural populations.

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. However the high

of ASP, coupled with the relatively high value of OVR, suggests that altitude is not the only parameter affecting the thermal quality of a habitat.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fine with heat, problems with water: microclimate alters water loss in a thermally adapted insular lizard

Belasen

Brock

et al. 2016

Oikos

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…These findings provide evidence that lizards are able to maintain their body temperatures relatively closer to the optimum while the habitat is becoming colder at increasing altitudes. In short, I. cyreni is a cold-adapted thermal specialist, like the other studied species of Iberolacerta (Mart ın and Salvador 1993; Aguado and Braña 2014;Ortega et al 2016;Zagar et al 2015). The effective thermoregulation of I. cyreni lizards makes them good candidates to behaviorally buffer the impact of global warming (Huey and Tewksbury 2009;Kearney et al 2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral buffering of global warming in a cold‐adapted lizard

Ortega

Mencía

Pérez-Mellado

2016

Ecology and Evolution

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Alpine lizards living in restricted areas might be particularly sensitive to climate change. We studied thermal biology of Iberolacerta cyreni in high mountains of central Spain. Our results suggest that I. cyreni is a cold‐adapted thermal specialist and an effective thermoregulator. Among ectotherms, thermal specialists are more threatened by global warming than generalists. Alpine lizards have no chance to disperse to new suitable habitats. In addition, physiological plasticity is unlikely to keep pace with the expected rates of environmental warming. Thus, lizards might rely on their behavior in order to deal with ongoing climate warming. Plasticity of thermoregulatory behavior has been proposed to buffer the rise of environmental temperatures. Therefore, we studied the change in body and environmental temperatures, as well as their relationships, for I. cyreni between the 1980s and 2012. Air temperatures have increased more than 3.5°C and substrate temperatures have increased by 6°C in the habitat of I. cyreni over the last 25 years. However, body temperatures of lizards have increased less than 2°C in the same period, and the linear relationship between body and environmental temperatures remains similar. These results show that alpine lizards are buffering the potential impact of the increase in their environmental temperatures, most probably by means of their behavior. Body temperatures of I. cyreni are still cold enough to avoid any drop in fitness. Nonetheless, if warming continues, behavioral buffering might eventually become useless, as it would imply spending too much time in shelter, losing feeding, and mating opportunities. Eventually, if body temperature exceeds the thermal optimum in the near future, fitness would decrease abruptly.

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“…Analysis of variance (Table 3) for testing the effects of T e shows that temperatures are not significant for determining BT. This appears to contradict the results found in other lizards species (Bauwens et al 1996;Gvozdik 2002;Ortega et al 2016;Sears et al 2016). However, it must be noted that random effects for each site have been considered here, and that these apparently play a more important role towards determining BT than T e by itself does.…”

Section: Mixed-effects Linear Modelsmentioning

confidence: 75%

“…If so, at the sites where current maximum temperatures are close to deleterious limits for lizards, even small increases may compromise the long-term survival of populations by enhancing thermal stress (Deutsch et al 2008;Huey et al 2009;Sinervo et al 2010;Brusch IV et al 2016;Kubisch et al 2016a). Therefore, in places where climate changes occur, species may be already responding by adjusting behavioral traits within their repertoire to use thermal microhabitat diversity provided by vegetation and orography (Ortega et al 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Would behavioral thermoregulation enable pregnant viviparous tropical lizards to cope with a warmer world?

López‐Alcaide

Nakamura

Smith

et al. 2017

Integrative Zoology

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Sceloporus lizards depend on external heat to achieve their preferred temperature (T ) for performing physiological processes. Evidence both in the field and laboratory indicates that pregnant females of this Genus select body temperatures (T ) lower than 34 °C as higher temperatures may be lethal to embryos. Therefore, thermoregulation is crucial for successful embryo development. Given the increase in global air temperature, it is expected that the first compensatory response of species that inhabit tropical climates will be behavioral thermoregulation. We tested whether viviparous Sceloporus formosus group lizards in the wild exhibited differences in thermoregulatory behavior to achieve the known T for developing embryos regardless of local thermal conditions. We quantified field active body temperature, thermoregulatory behavior mechanisms (time of sighting, microhabitat used and basking time) and available microhabitat thermal conditions (i.e. operative temperature) for 10 lizard species during gestation, distributed along an altitudinal gradient. We applied both conventional and phylogenic analyses to explore whether T or behavioral thermoregulation could be regulated in response to different thermal conditions. These species showed no significant differences in field T during gestation regardless of local thermal conditions. In contrast, they exhibited significant differences in their behavioral thermoregulation associated with local environmental conditions. Based on these observations, the differences in thermoregulatory behavior identified are interpreted as compensatory adjustments to local thermal conditions. We conclude that these species may deal with higher temperatures predicted for the tropics by modulating their thermoregulatory behavior.

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The peak of thermoregulation effectiveness: Thermal biology of the Pyrenean rock lizard, Iberolacerta bonnali (Squamata, Lacertidae)

Cited by 32 publications

References 47 publications

Fine with heat, problems with water: microclimate alters water loss in a thermally adapted insular lizard

Fine with heat, problems with water: microclimate alters water loss in a thermally adapted insular lizard

Behavioral buffering of global warming in a cold‐adapted lizard

Would behavioral thermoregulation enable pregnant viviparous tropical lizards to cope with a warmer world?

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