10.5061/DRYAD.JG470
Grimm-Seyfarth, Annegret
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research
University of Potsdam
Mihoub, Jean-Baptiste
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research
Henle, Klaus
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research
Data from: Too hot to die? The effects of vegetation shading on past,
present, and future activity budgets of two diurnal skinks from arid
Australia
Dryad
dataset
2018
activity predictions
Anthropocene
extrapolating experimental data
behavioural thermoregulation
Morethia boulengeri
Ctenotus regius
operative temperature
lizard
operative thermal environment
2018-06-22T00:00:00Z
2018-06-22T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.3238
1462718 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Behavioral thermoregulation is an important mechanism allowing ectotherms
to respond to thermal variations. Its efficiency might become imperative
for securing activity budgets under future climate change. For diurnal
lizards, thermal microhabitat variability appears to be of high
importance, especially in hot deserts where vegetation is highly scattered
and sensitive to climatic fluctuations. We investigated the effects of a
shading gradient from vegetation on body temperatures and activity timing
for two diurnal, terrestrial desert lizards, Ctenotus regius, and Morethia
boulengeri, and analyzed their changes under past, present, and future
climatic conditions. Both species’ body temperatures and activity timing
strongly depended on the shading gradient provided by vegetation
heterogeneity. At high temperatures, shaded locations provided cooling
temperatures and increased diurnal activity. Conversely, bushes also
buffered cold temperature by saving heat. According to future climate
change scenarios, cooler microhabitats might become beneficial to
warm-adapted species, such as C. regius, by increasing the duration of
daily activity. Contrarily, warmer microhabitats might become unsuitable
for less warm-adapted species such as M. boulengeri for which midsummers
might result in a complete restriction of activity irrespective of
vegetation. However, total annual activity would still increase provided
that individuals would be able to shift their seasonal timing towards
spring and autumn. Overall, we highlight the critical importance of
thermoregulatory behavior to buffer temperatures and its dependence on
vegetation heterogeneity. Whereas studies often neglect ecological
processes when anticipating species’ responses to future climate change
the strongest impact of a changing climate on terrestrial ectotherms in
hot deserts is likely to be the loss of shaded microhabitats rather than
the rise in temperature itself. We argue that conservation strategies
aiming at addressing future climate changes should focus more on the
cascading effects of vegetation rather than on shifts of species
distributions predicted solely by climatic envelopes.
Opertative and environmental temperaturesThis Excel-file contains
operative and environmental data for the two skink species, M. boulengeri
and C. regius, in Kinchega National Park, Australia, which were used for
the analyses.Opertative-temperatures.xlsx
Kinchega National Park
Australia