This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint.
This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint.
On a global scale, organisms face significant challenges due to climate change and anthropogenic disturbance. In many ectotherms, developmental and physiological processes are sensitive to changes in temperature and resources. Developmental plasticity in thermal physiology may provide adaptive advantages to environmental extremes if early environmental conditions are predictable of late-life environments. Here, we conducted a laboratory experiment to test how developmental temperature and maternal resource investment influence thermal physiology (critical thermal maximum: CTmax & thermal preference: Tpref) in a common skink (Lampropholis delicata). We then compared our experimental findings more broadly across reptiles using meta-analysis. In both our experimental study and meta-analysis, we did not find evidence that developmental environments influence thermal physiology. Furthermore, the effects of developmental environments on thermal physiology did not vary by age, taxon, or climate zone (temperate/tropical) in reptiles. Overall, the magnitude of developmental plasticity on thermal physiology appears to be limited across reptile taxa. Our results suggest that behavioural or evolutionary processes, as opposed to developmental plasticity, may be more critical in mitigating the impacts of changing thermal conditions in reptiles in the future.
https://doi.org/10.32942/X2JP40
Evolution, Integrative Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
thermal physiology, meta-analysis, Developmental plasticity, acclimation response ratio, lizards, snake, turtle, tortoise
Published: 2023-01-18 20:39
CC BY Attribution 4.0 International
Conflict of interest statement:
None
Data and Code Availability Statement:
Experimental and meta-analytic datasets are available from: https://github.com/kris-wild/Lampro_project.git
There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.