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Behavioral buffering of global warming in a cold‐adapted lizard

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 ectotherm...

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Autores principales: Ortega, Zaida, Mencía, Abraham, Pérez‐Mellado, Valentín
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4931003/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27386098
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2216
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author Ortega, Zaida
Mencía, Abraham
Pérez‐Mellado, Valentín
author_facet Ortega, Zaida
Mencía, Abraham
Pérez‐Mellado, Valentín
author_sort Ortega, Zaida
collection PubMed
description 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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spelling pubmed-49310032016-07-06 Behavioral buffering of global warming in a cold‐adapted lizard Ortega, Zaida Mencía, Abraham Pérez‐Mellado, Valentín Ecol Evol Original Research 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. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2016-06-12 /pmc/articles/PMC4931003/ /pubmed/27386098 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2216 Text en © 2016 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Research
Ortega, Zaida
Mencía, Abraham
Pérez‐Mellado, Valentín
Behavioral buffering of global warming in a cold‐adapted lizard
title Behavioral buffering of global warming in a cold‐adapted lizard
title_full Behavioral buffering of global warming in a cold‐adapted lizard
title_fullStr Behavioral buffering of global warming in a cold‐adapted lizard
title_full_unstemmed Behavioral buffering of global warming in a cold‐adapted lizard
title_short Behavioral buffering of global warming in a cold‐adapted lizard
title_sort behavioral buffering of global warming in a cold‐adapted lizard
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4931003/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27386098
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2216
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