RT Journal Article
T1 Mismatches between phenotype and environment shape fitness at hyperlocal scales
A1 Alujević, Karla
A1 Streicher, Jeffrey W.
A1 Garcia, Raquel A.
A1 Riesgo, Ana
A1 Taboada Moreno, Sergio
A1 Logan, Michael L.
A1 Clusella-Trullas, Susana
AB In the era of human-driven climate change, understanding whether behavioural buffering of temperature change is linked with organismal fitness is essential. According to the ‘cost–benefit’ model of thermoregulation, animals that live in environments with high frequencies of favourable thermal microclimates should incur lower thermoregulatory costs, thermoregulate more efficiently and shunt the associated savings in time and energy towards other vital tasks such as feeding, territory defence and mate acquisition, increasing fitness. Here, we explore how thermal landscapes at the scale of individual territories, physiological performance and behaviour interact and shape fitness in the southern rock agama lizard (Agama atra). We integrated laboratory assays of whole organism performance with behavioural observations in the field, fine-scale estimates of environmental temperature, and paternity assignment of offspring to test whether fitness is predicted by territory thermal quality (i.e. the number of hours that operative temperatures in a territory fall within an individual's performance breadth). Male lizards that occupied territories of low thermal quality spent more time behaviourally compensating for sub-optimal temperatures and displayed less. Further, display rate was positively associated with lizard fitness, suggesting that there is an opportunity cost to engaging in thermoregulatory behaviour that will change as climate change progresses
PB The Royal Society Publishing
SN 0962-8452
YR 2023
FD 2023-06-14
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/122359
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/122359
LA eng
NO Alujević, K., Streicher, J. W., Garcia, R. A., Riesgo, A., Taboada, S., Logan, M. L., & Clusella-Trullas, S. (2023). Mismatches between phenotype and environment shape fitness at hyperlocal scales. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 290(2000). https://doi.org/10.1098/RSPB.2023.0865
NO This research was financially and logistically supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa (CPRR no. 98880). K.A. was supported by the NRF Doctoral Scholarship for Full-time Studies. M.L.L. was supported by a United States National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology (award number DBI-1402497). S.T. received funding from grant PID2020-117115GA-100 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by Ramón y Cajal grant RYC2021-03152-I, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR.
NO National Research Foundation (South Africa)
NO National Science Foundation (United States)
NO Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España)
NO European Commission
NO Universidad Complutense de Madrid
DS Docta Complutense
RD 19 mar 2026