Meeting Abstract
In ectotherms, preferred body temperature (Tpref) is the temperature that an organism selects when uninfluenced by the demands of interacting with conspecifics, feeding, or evading predators, and is often measured in species-appropriate laboratory thermal gradients. Many species of lizards, in particular, manage to keep their body temperatures within a relatively narrow range of Tpref through active thermoregulation. However, increasing environmental temperatures may impose serious constraints on the ability of many lizard species to operate within their Tpref. Consequently, it is important to understand the thermal preferences of lizard species, particularly those dwelling in environments likely to experience significant climate change. We measured the Tpref of two species of burrowing African skink, that inhabit different habitat types. The sandfish, Scincus scincus, occurs on hot and arid sand dunes across much of northern Africa and parts of the Middle East. Sundevall’s writhing skink, Mochlus sundevalli, occurs in scrubby woodland from South Africa north to Kenya. We found that the sandfish had a mean Tpref of 36.3+1.4°C and the writhing skink had a mean Tpref of 26.7±1.3°C. We discuss how the thermal biology of these two ecologically distinct skink species may affect their susceptibility to projected levels of climate change within their natural habitats.
