Thermal ecology and baseline energetic requirements of a large-bodied ectotherm suggest resilience to climate change.

Autor: Crowell HL; Biological Sciences Department California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo CA USA.; Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department University of Michigan Ann Arbor MI USA., King KC; Crocodile Lake Wildlife Refuge U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Key Largo FL USA., Whelan JM; Biological Sciences Department California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo CA USA., Harmel MV; Jekyll Island Authority Conservation Department Jekyll Island GA USA., Garcia G; Biological Sciences Department California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo CA USA., Gonzales SG; Biological Sciences Department California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo CA USA., Maier PH; Biological Sciences Department California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo CA USA., Neldner H; Biological Sciences Department California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo CA USA., Nhu T; Biological Sciences Department California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo CA USA., Nolan JT; Biological Sciences Department California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo CA USA., Taylor EN; Biological Sciences Department California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo CA USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Ecology and evolution [Ecol Evol] 2021 May 07; Vol. 11 (12), pp. 8170-8182. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 May 07 (Print Publication: 2021).
DOI: 10.1002/ece3.7649
Abstrakt: Most studies on how rising temperatures will impact terrestrial ectotherms have focused on single populations or multiple sympatric species. Addressing the thermal and energetic implications of climatic variation on multiple allopatric populations of a species will help us better understand how a species may be impacted by altered climates.We used eight years of thermal and behavioral data collected from four populations of Pacific rattlesnakes ( Crotalus oreganus ) living in climatically distinct habitat types (inland and coastal) to determine the field-active and laboratory-preferred body temperatures, thermoregulatory metrics, and maintenance energetic requirements of snakes from each population.Physical models showed that thermal quality was best at coastal sites, but inland snakes thermoregulated more accurately despite being in more thermally constrained environments. Projected increases of 1 and 2°C in ambient temperature result in an increase in overall thermal quality at both coastal and inland sites.Population differences in modeled standard metabolic rate estimates were driven by body size and not field-active body temperature, with inland snakes requiring 1.6× more food annually than coastal snakes.All snakes thermoregulated with high accuracy, suggesting that small increases in ambient temperature are unlikely to impact the maintenance energetic requirements of individual snakes and that some species of large-bodied reptiles may be robust to modest thermal perturbations under conservative climate change predictions. ​.
Competing Interests: None declared.
(© 2021 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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