Department of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA.
Department of Biological Sciences, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701, USA.
Integr Comp Biol. 2024 Sep 17;64(2):390-401. doi: 10.1093/icb/icae061.
Deserts have always amazed researchers due to their high diversity of habitats, where plant and animal species have been able to adapt and diversify, even when these areas impose several constraints on an organism's activity patterns. In particular, deserts support several lizard species adapted to the thermal and water restrictions found in such biomes. Although several studies have attempted to understand how lizard species might respond to water deficits or droughts in deserts, few have addressed how these responses might vary along a latitudinal gradient. This raises the question of whether physiological buffering of the organism or the climatic environment affects water loss in lizards. Here, we used six populations of Urosaurus ornatus to test whether water loss is influenced more by the intrinsic physiology of the lizard or by the climatic niche. We found that water loss is primarily influenced by the climatic niche of the lizard. However, future studies should focus on how microclimatic variables can influence water loss in organisms found across large latitudinal gradients.
沙漠因其丰富多样的生境而一直令研究人员感到惊奇，在这些生境中，植物和动物物种已经能够适应和多样化，即使这些地区对生物体的活动模式施加了多种限制。特别是，沙漠支持着几种适应这种生物群落中热和水限制的蜥蜴物种。尽管有几项研究试图了解蜥蜴物种如何应对沙漠中的水分不足或干旱，但很少有研究涉及这些反应如何沿着纬度梯度变化。这就提出了一个问题，即生物体的生理缓冲作用还是气候环境会影响蜥蜴的水分流失。在这里，我们使用了六个 Urosaurus ornatus 种群来测试水分流失是否更多地受到蜥蜴内在生理的影响还是受到气候生态位的影响。我们发现，水分流失主要受蜥蜴的气候生态位影响。然而，未来的研究应该集中在微气候变量如何影响在大纬度梯度上发现的生物体的水分流失。
