Female lizards (Eremias argus) reverse Bergmann's rule across altitude

• Published in: Ecology and evolution Vol. 13; no. 8; pp. e10393 - n/a
• Main Authors: Deme, Gideon Gywa, Liang, Xixi, Okoro, Joseph Onyekwere, Bhattarai, Prakash, Sun, Baojun, Malann, Yoila David, Martin, Ryan A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England John Wiley and Sons Inc 01.08.2023
• Subjects: climate; Evolutionary Ecology; Functional Ecology; geographical gradients; multifarious environments; resource availability; squamates; resource availability; multifarious environments; climate; squamates; geographical gradients
• ISSN: 2045-7758; 2045-7758
• DOI: 10.1002/ece3.10393

The evolution of body size within and among species is predicted to be influenced by multifarious environmental factors. However, the specific drivers of body size variation have remained difficult to understand because of the wide range of proximate factors that covary with ectotherm body sizes across populations with varying local environmental conditions. Here, we used female Eremias argus lizards collected from different populations across their wide range in China, and constructed linear mixed models to assess how climatic conditions and/or available resources at different altitudes shape the geographical patterns of lizard body size across altitude. Lizard populations showed significant differences in body size across altitudes. Furthermore, we found that climatic and seasonal changes along the altitudinal gradient also explained variations in body size among populations. Specifically, body size decreased with colder and drier environmental conditions at high altitudes, reversing Bergmann's rule. Limited resources at high altitudes, measured by the low vegetative index, may also constrain body size. Therefore, our study demonstrates that multifarious environmental factors could strongly influence the intraspecific variation in organisms' body size. The specific drivers of body size variations have remained difficult to understand because of the wide range of proximate underlying factors that have consistently covaried with ectotherms' body sizes across geographic gradients. We used the data from long‐term field studies spanning 10 years of a wide‐ranging distributed lizard species across China to show that the intraspecific variations in species' body sizes may be influenced by their multifarious local environments as adaptive plasticity for organisms to possibly, buffer metabolic costs along geographic clines.