González-Morales Juan C, Rivera-Rea Jimena, Suárez-Varón Gabriel, Bastiaans Elizabeth, Zarza Heliot
Conservation Biology Academic Area, Environmental Science Department, DCBS, Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), Campus Lerma, Lerma de Villada, State of Mexico, Mexico.
Amecameca University Center, Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, Toluca, State of Mexico, Mexico.
Integr Zool. 2024 Sep 30. doi: 10.1111/1749-4877.12908.
Urbanization is a global phenomenon that involves the transformation of natural areas into urban spaces, thereby subjecting organisms to new selective pressures including a wide variety of pollutants and changes in intra- and interspecific interactions. Considering that projections indicate that by the year 2050, 65% of the human population will live in urban areas and that urbanization is a phenomenon with an upward pattern, identifying these phenotypic traits is vital to implementing conservation and management plans for urban fauna. The urban environment may exert different selective pressures on sexually selected traits than more pristine environments, a phenomenon which has been well studied in birds but is less understood in other vertebrates such as lizards, although they are common inhabitants of urban environments. Here, we compare sexual coloration, parasite load, and immune response in Sceloporus torquatus lizards in urban and non-urban environments of Central Mexico. Our study shows that sexual coloration is more saturated (bluer) in male lizards from urban environments, while UV chroma was higher in non-urban lizards. The average parasite load is lower in urban lizards than in non-urban lizards, and we found a negative relationship between hemoparasite count and sexual coloration in male lizards from non-urban environments but not in male lizards from urban environments. Additionally, non-urban lizards exhibited a higher immune response. In female lizards, sexual coloration differed significantly between urban and non-urban environments, but parasite load and immune response did not differ. These results may be useful to improve herpetofauna conservation plans in urbanized environments.
城市化是一种全球现象，它涉及将自然区域转变为城市空间，从而使生物面临新的选择压力，包括各种各样的污染物以及种内和种间相互作用的变化。鉴于预测表明到2050年，65%的人类人口将居住在城市地区，并且城市化是一种呈上升趋势的现象，识别这些表型特征对于实施城市动物保护和管理计划至关重要。与更原始的环境相比，城市环境可能对性选择特征施加不同的选择压力，这一现象在鸟类中已有充分研究，但在其他脊椎动物如蜥蜴中了解较少，尽管它们是城市环境中的常见居民。在这里，我们比较了墨西哥中部城市和非城市环境中领纹强棱蜥的性色彩、寄生虫负荷和免疫反应。我们的研究表明，来自城市环境的雄性蜥蜴的性色彩更饱和（更蓝），而非城市蜥蜴的紫外色度更高。城市蜥蜴的平均寄生虫负荷低于非城市蜥蜴，并且我们发现非城市环境中的雄性蜥蜴的血寄生虫数量与性色彩之间存在负相关，而城市环境中的雄性蜥蜴则不存在这种关系。此外，非城市蜥蜴表现出更高的免疫反应。在雌性蜥蜴中，城市和非城市环境之间的性色彩存在显著差异，但寄生虫负荷和免疫反应没有差异。这些结果可能有助于改进城市化环境中的爬行动物保护计划。
