Abstract
Mountain lizards are highly vulnerable to climate change, and the continuous warming of their habitats could be seriously threatening their survival. We aim to compare the thermal ecology and microhabitat selection of a mountain lizard, Iberolacerta galani, and a widely distributed lizard, Podarcis bocagei, in a montane area. Both species are currently in close syntopy in the study area, at 1,400 m above the sea level. We determined the precision, accuracy and effectiveness of thermoregulation, and the thermal quality of habitat for both species. We also compared the selection of thermal microhabitats between both species. Results show that I. galani is a cold-adapted thermal specialist with a preferred temperature range of 27.9–29.7 °C, while P. bocagei would be a thermal generalist, with a broader and higher preferred temperature range (30.1–34.5 °C). In addition, I. galani selects rocky substrates while P. bocagei selects warmer soil and leaf litter substrates. The thermal quality of the habitat is higher for P. bocagei than for I. galani. Finally, P. bocagei achieves a significantly higher effectiveness of thermoregulation (0.87) than I. galani (0.80). Therefore, these mountain habitat conditions seem currently more suitable for performance of thermophilic generalist lizards than for cold-specialist lizards.
Highlights
Climate change has already produced several impacts in the biology and distribution of many animal species worldwide (Parmesan, 2006; McCain, 2010)
We studied the thermal ecology of the León rock lizard, I. galani, a mountain lizard living in its historical range, and the Bocage’s wall lizard, P. bocagei, that has expanded its altitudinal range to the study area in recent years
Our data suggest that I. galani would be a cold-adapted thermal specialist species, like other species of the genus Iberolacerta (Martín & Salvador, 1993; Aguado & Braña, 2014; Žagar et al, 2015; Ortega, Mencía & Pérez-Mellado, 2016), while P. bocagei would be a thermal generalist with preference for warmer temperatures, like other species of the genus Podarcis (Bauwens et al, 1995; Bauwens, Hertz & Castilla, 1996; Capula et al, 2014; Ortega et al, 2014)
Summary
Climate change has already produced several impacts in the biology and distribution of many animal species worldwide (Parmesan, 2006; McCain, 2010). Mountain lizards could be threatened by potential displacement by thermal generalist species with a broader distribution at the surrounding lowlands that may ascend in altitude as warming increases (Araújo, Thuiller & Pearson, 2006; Huey et al, 2012; Comas, Escoriza & Moreno-Rueda, 2014) An expansion, both in altitude and latitude, due to climate change has already been documented for several species (Parmesan, 2006; Sinervo et al, 2010; Chen et al, 2011; Moreno-Rueda et al, 2012; Bestion, Clobert & Cote , 2015). The study of the thermal ecology of these mountain lizards, as well as the comparison with their potential competitors, would be useful to design the conservation measures required to preserve the species (Urban, Tewksbury & Sheldon, 2012; Lord & Whitlatch, 2015)
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