Abstract
Understanding how different environmental factors influence species occurrence is a key issue to address the study of natural populations. However, there is a lack of knowledge on how local traits influence the microhabitat use of tropical arboreal lizards. Here, we investigated the microhabitat selection of the poorly known lizard Tropidurus lagunablanca (Squamata: Tropiduridae) and evaluated how environmental microhabitat features influence animal’s presence. We used a Resource Selection Function approach, in a case/control design where we analyzed the effect of substrate temperature and tree’s diameter at breast height (DBH) in the probability of presence of lizards using mixed Conditional Logistic Regression. We found that T. lagunablanca uses trees with DBH from 0.40 m to 4 m and substrate temperatures ranging from 25.9℃ to 42℃. Moreover, we showed that thickness of the trees and substrate temperatures significantly increased the probability of presence of T. lagunablanca individuals, being the probability of presence higher than 50% for trees up to 1.5 m DBH and temperature of substrate up to 37.5℃. Our study probed that T. lagunablanca individuals choose trees non-randomly, selecting thicker and warmer tree trunks. This information advances the knowledge of the spatial ecology of Neotropical arboreal lizards and is relevant for conservation, putting an emphasis on preserving native vegetation in the Pantanal.
Highlights
Understanding how different environmental variables affect species’ occurrence is of great importance for the study of natural populations and a central topic of organismal biology (Schwenk et al, 2009; Ehrlén & Morris, 2015)
The mixed‐CLR analysis showed that both Ts and diameter at breast height (DBH) of the trees significantly influenced the presence of T. lagunablanca individuals (P = 0.002 and P < 0.001, respectively; Table 1)
We showed that the poorly known lizard T. lagunablanca uses trees with a mean temperature of 32.06°C and a mean thickness of 40.5 cm in the Pantanal of Brazil
Summary
Understanding how different environmental variables affect species’ occurrence is of great importance for the study of natural populations and a central topic of organismal biology (Schwenk et al, 2009; Ehrlén & Morris, 2015). Other mechanisms can influence the occurrence of species (e.g., competition, coexistence, predation; Chesson, 2000; HilleRisLambers et al, 2012; Cadotte & Tucker, 2017), locally, environmental filters can determine the presence of individuals. In this context, one of the most important factors for the spatial organization of population is how individuals select the resources in the environment (Pianka, 1973; Nogueira et al, 2005; Rocha & Anjos, 2007; Gonçalves-Sousa et al, 2019; Peixoto et al, 2020). Body temperature regulation is essential for the development of all activities such as foraging, anti-predatory behaviors, and mating
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