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Public Documents
1
Predator presence and recent climatic warming raise body temperatures of island lizar...
Felix Landry Yuan
and 6 more
September 28, 2020
In ectothermic predator-prey relationships, the capacity for prey to successfully evade predation will depend upon physiological and behavioural responses that relate to both players’ thermal biology. On the Izu Islands of Japan, we investigated how a prey lizard species has responded physiologically and thermally to the presence of a snake predator over evolutionary time in addition to recent climatic warming. Foraging lizard body temperatures have increased by 1.0°C from 1981 to 2019 while lizard body temperatures were 3.4°C warmer on islands where the snake predator is present relative to snake-free islands. We also found that warmer prey body temperatures result in faster running speeds of the prey at temperatures suboptimal for the snake predator. The results show that lizard body temperatures have increased with warming but not to the same extent as that exerted by predation pressure. However, further warming could irrevocably alter this and other ectothermic predator-prey relationships.