Meeting Abstract
The rapid modification of habitats worldwide represents a key challenge to species. In the recent literature much focus has been placed on the effects of rising temperatures, especially for tropical species. However, even rapid climate-induced temperature rises are predicted to occur over a relatively long time scale in contrast to land use changes which can alter microhabitats and corresponding microclimates completely in a single generation. In this study we test whether species can shift their ecological niche to utilize rubber and oil palm plantations in Southeast Asia. We focus on the generalist lizard, Calotes emma and two ecological niche axes: thermal and structural. We found that C. emma shifts its structural niche in plantation habitats, with coincident differences in ecomorphology (leg length) between habitats. In contrast, we found no evidence of thermal niche shifts, possibly because thermal differences between plantations and forest edges still fall within the temperature preferences of C. emma and do not approach it’s thermal maximum. Our data suggests C. emma may be a rare example of a species that is not only capable of altering its behaviour to survive in plantation habitats but that these habitats are actually more favourable for it than its ancestral forest edge habitat. However the fact remains that this was the only agamid species detected in oil palm plantations in our study area and by far the most abundant of four species in rubber plantation; a shift of low abundance/high species diversity in forests to high abundance/low species diversity in plantations.
