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Rosso AA, Casement B, Chung AK, Curlis JD, Folfas E, Gallegos MA, Neel LK, Nicholson DJ, Williams CE, McMillan WO, Logan ML, Cox CL. Plasticity of Gene Expression and Thermal Tolerance: Implications for Climate Change Vulnerability in a Tropical Forest Lizard. ECOLOGICAL AND EVOLUTIONARY PHYSIOLOGY 2024; 97:81-96. [PMID: 38728692 DOI: 10.1086/729927] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/12/2024]
Abstract
AbstractTropical ectotherms are thought to be especially vulnerable to climate change because they have evolved in temporally stable thermal environments and therefore have decreased tolerance for thermal variability. Thus, they are expected to have narrow thermal tolerance ranges, live close to their upper thermal tolerance limits, and have decreased thermal acclimation capacity. Although models often predict that tropical forest ectotherms are especially vulnerable to rapid environmental shifts, these models rarely include the potential for plasticity of relevant traits. We measured phenotypic plasticity of thermal tolerance and thermal preference as well as multitissue transcriptome plasticity in response to warmer temperatures in a species that previous work has suggested is highly vulnerable to climate warming, the Panamanian slender anole lizard (Anolis apletophallus). We found that many genes, including heat shock proteins, were differentially expressed across tissues in response to short-term warming. Under long-term warming, the voluntary thermal maxima of lizards also increased, although thermal preference exhibited only limited plasticity. Using these data, we modeled changes in the activity time of slender anoles through the end of the century under climate change and found that plasticity should delay declines in activity time by at least two decades. Our results suggest that slender anoles, and possibly other tropical ectotherms, can alter the expression of genes and phenotypes when responding to shifting environmental temperatures and that plasticity should be considered when predicting the future of organisms under a changing climate.
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Logan ML, Neel LK, Nicholson DJ, Stokes AJ, Miller CL, Chung AK, Curlis JD, Keegan KM, Rosso AA, Maayan I, Folfas E, Williams CE, Casement B, Gallegos Koyner MA, Padilla Perez DJ, Falvey CH, Alexander SM, Charles KL, Graham ZA, McMillan WO, Losos JB, Cox CL. Sex-specific microhabitat use is associated with sex-biased thermal physiology in Anolis lizards. J Exp Biol 2021; 224:jeb235697. [PMID: 33328289 DOI: 10.1242/jeb.235697] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/17/2020] [Accepted: 12/07/2020] [Indexed: 08/25/2023]
Abstract
If fitness optima for a given trait differ between males and females in a population, sexual dimorphism may evolve. Sex-biased trait variation may affect patterns of habitat use, and if the microhabitats used by each sex have dissimilar microclimates, this can drive sex-specific selection on thermal physiology. Nevertheless, tests of differences between the sexes in thermal physiology are uncommon, and studies linking these differences to microhabitat use or behavior are even rarer. We examined microhabitat use and thermal physiology in two ectothermic congeners that are ecologically similar but differ in their degree of sexual size dimorphism. Brown anoles (Anolis sagrei) exhibit male-biased sexual size dimorphism and live in thermally heterogeneous habitats, whereas slender anoles (Anolis apletophallus) are sexually monomorphic in body size and live in thermally homogeneous habitats. We hypothesized that differences in habitat use between the sexes would drive sexual divergence in thermal physiology in brown anoles, but not slender anoles, because male and female brown anoles may be exposed to divergent microclimates. We found that male and female brown anoles, but not slender anoles, used perches with different thermal characteristics and were sexually dimorphic in thermal tolerance traits. However, field-active body temperatures and behavior in a laboratory thermal arena did not differ between females and males in either species. Our results suggest that sexual dimorphism in thermal physiology can arise from phenotypic plasticity or sex-specific selection on traits that are linked to thermal tolerance, rather than from direct effects of thermal environments experienced by males and females.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michael L Logan
- Department of Biology, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA
- Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panamá City, Panamá
| | - Lauren K Neel
- School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA
| | - Daniel J Nicholson
- School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University, London, E1 4NS, UK
- Zoological Society of London, London, NW1 4RY, UK
| | - Andrew J Stokes
- Department of Environmental Studies, University of Illinois Springfield, Springfield, IL 62703, USA
| | - Christina L Miller
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia
| | - Albert K Chung
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
- Department of Biology, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA 30460, USA
| | - John David Curlis
- Department of Biology, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA 30460, USA
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
| | - Kaitlin M Keegan
- Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA
| | - Adam A Rosso
- Department of Biology, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA 30460, USA
| | - Inbar Maayan
- Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
| | - Edite Folfas
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5S 3B2
| | - Claire E Williams
- Department of Biology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Brianna Casement
- Department of Biology and Environmental Science, Heidelberg University, Tiffin, OH 44883, USA
| | - Maria A Gallegos Koyner
- Department of Forest Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z4
| | | | - Cleo H Falvey
- Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA 02125, USA
| | - Sean M Alexander
- Departement of Biology, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ 08901, USA
| | | | - Zackary A Graham
- School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA
| | - W Owen McMillan
- Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panamá City, Panamá
| | - Jonathan B Losos
- Department of Biology, Washington University, Saint Louis, MO 63130, USA
| | - Christian L Cox
- Department of Biological Sciences and Institute for the Environment, Florida International University, FL 33199, USA
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