4.7 Article

Fecal glucocorticoid metabolites and ectoparasites as biomarkers of heat stress close to roads in a Mediterranean lizard

Journal

SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
Volume 802, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149919

Keywords

Cost-bene fit models; Ectotherm; Mites; Psammodromus algirus; Road ecology

Funding

  1. MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE [PGC2018-097426-B-C21]
  2. ICETA -Instituto de Ciencias, Tecnologias e Agroambiente da Universidade do Porto [CEECIND/04084/2017]
  3. Fundacao da Ciencia e Tecnologia
  4. Comunidad deMadrid [2018 T1/AMB10374]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Research suggests that in temperate regions, narrowing differences between air and ground temperatures with the advance of the season may lead ectotherm species to increase thermoregulatory precision and glucocorticoid secretion. However, this adaptive response to environmental thermal restrictions may also come with an increased susceptibility to ectoparasites.
Differences between air and ground temperatures are expected to narrow with the advance of the season in temperate regions (aka seasonal restriction in the availability of thermal microhabitats), which may activate behavioral and physiological responses of ectotherm species adapted to temperate climates. However, according to cost-benefit models of ectotherm thermoregulation, we hypothesize that these responses may also carry some costs. We quantified seasonal shifts in thermoregulatory precision, concentration of fecal glucocorticoid metabolites, and load of ectoparasites in a Mediterranean lizard, Psammodromus algirus. We also tested whether the proximity to a road, a putative source of chronic stress, can facilitate the glucocorticoid-mediated response of lizards to heat stress. As expected, differences between body and environmental temperatures narrowed during the reproductive season and lizards responded by increasing their thermoregulatory precision and the secretion of glucocorticoids, as indicated by metabolites in feces. Interestingly, lizards tended to have higher glucocorticoid concentration when captured far from the road. This might reflect either a putative impairment of the glucocorticoid-mediated response of the lizards to heat stress close to the road or the plastic capability of P. algirus to acclimate to sources of moderate chronic stress. In the latter direction, the increase of both glucocorticoid metabolites and thermoregulatory precision supported that this Mediterranean species responds to environmental thermal restrictions with adaptive behavioral and physiological mechanisms. However, this was also associated with an increase in its susceptibility to ectoparasites, which represents an added cost to the current cost-benefit models of ectotherm thermoregulation. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.7
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available