Oliveira Pedro, Gomes Verónica, Riaño Gabriel, Rato Catarina
CIBIO/InBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, Universidade do Porto, Vila do Conde, Vairão, Vila do Conde, Portugal.
BIOPOLIS Program in Genomics, Biodiversity and Land Planning, CIBIO, Vairão, Portugal.
J Exp Zool A Ecol Integr Physiol. 2023 Jan;339(1):28-36. doi: 10.1002/jez.2645. Epub 2022 Jul 24.
Locomotion performance in reptiles is deeply associated with habitat use, escape from predators, prey capture, and territory defense. As ectotherms, this trait in lizards is extremely sensitive to body temperature (BT). However, most studies rarely look at locomotion patterns in an ontogenic perspective. The Moorish gecko, Tarentola mauritanica, was used to investigate the possible effects of distinct BTs on the locomotor performance within juveniles and adults. Not surprisingly, adult individuals significantly outperform the juveniles in speed at every BT. Moreover, except in the 30-day-old juveniles, there is a general trend for an increase of speed with BT. The comparison of these speed values with the ones obtained for diurnal lizard species, corroborates the premise that because nocturnal species are subject to low thermal heterogeneity, little selection for behavioral thermoregulation, but strong selection for high performance at relatively cool temperatures are expected. Furthermore, the higher locomotor performance in adults at 29°C, roughly coincides with previously obtained preferred BTs. However, further studies need to be conducted to build the full performance curve, and to validate the existence of coadaption between behavioral thermoregulation and thermal sensitivity of physiological performance. Finally, this study has found that adult males run significantly faster than females at the highest BTs, highlighting the importance in understanding sex differences, and its potential to drive sex-specific behaviors, ecology, and ultimately fitness.
爬行动物的运动表现与栖息地利用、躲避捕食者、捕食猎物及领地防御密切相关。作为变温动物，蜥蜴的这一特性对体温（BT）极为敏感。然而，大多数研究很少从个体发育的角度观察运动模式。摩尔壁虎（Tarentola mauritanica）被用于研究不同体温对幼体和成体运动表现的可能影响。不出所料，在每个体温下，成年个体在速度上都显著优于幼体。此外，除了30日龄的幼体，一般存在随着体温升高速度增加的趋势。将这些速度值与昼行性蜥蜴物种获得的值进行比较，证实了这样一个前提，即由于夜行性物种面临的热异质性较低，对行为体温调节的选择较少，但预计在相对凉爽的温度下对高性能有强烈的选择。此外，成年个体在29°C时较高的运动表现，大致与先前获得的偏好体温相符。然而，需要进行进一步的研究来构建完整的表现曲线，并验证行为体温调节与生理表现的热敏感性之间协同适应的存在。最后，本研究发现成年雄性在最高体温下的奔跑速度明显快于雌性，这突出了理解性别差异的重要性，以及其驱动性别特异性行为、生态学并最终影响适应性的潜力。
