News from down under to the West: Comparative thermal biology of lizards of the Liolaemus goetschi group from Patagonia, Argentina.

MORENO AZÓCAR, DÉBORA LINA; BONINO, MARCELO FABIÁN; CRUZ, FÉLIX B.; PEROTTI, MARÍA GABRIELA; ABDALA, CRISTIAN SIMÓN; VANHOOYDONCK, BIEKE

Utrecht

Congreso; 18th Benelux Congress of Zoology; 2011

University of Utrecht

Thermal biology is a key aspect for an ectotherm’s physiology and behavior. Although thermal biology is a well studied subject in reptiles, some evolutionary aspects are still controversial. For example it is unclear whether thermal variables coevolved in some groups of reptiles. Lizards from the Liolaemus goetschi group occur along a wide latitudinal range (28°S-48°S, 2300Km) across the cold and variable Patagonian environments. Their known phylogenetic relationships, variation in their ecological attributes and wide distribution makes this group a good study case to examine the evolution of their thermal biology. Here, we study thermal variables of 13 species belonging to the Liolaemus goetschi group, in order to answer three questions. First, did the thermal characteristics of the animals, such as critical temperatures and thermal preferences, co-evolve? Second, are these traits modeled by the environment or are they the result of phylogenetic constraints? Third, do the thermal features evolved at a greater phylogenetic scale in Liolaemus? We answer these questions by using phylogenetically based analyses as well as conventional statistics. We collected data from our focal species and used the species information about thermal biology of Liolaemus lizards available in the literature. Our results show that lizards from the L. goetschi group vary in some aspects of their thermal biology and some traits have co-evolved, but thermal biology seems to be independent of the environment and modeled by phylogeny. Some of these trends are also valid in a broader phylogenetic scale, but we found some mixed effects of environment and phylogeny.