Reproductive characteristics of a lowland population of an alpine lizard: Lacerta monticola (Squamata, Lacertidae) in north-west Spain

Rúa, Marta; Galán, Pedro

doi:10.1163/157075603322556265

Cited by 9 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…2016 ). This result agrees with the experimental work of Castilla and Bauwens (2000) on the reproductive characteristics of P. lilfordi and with those found for other lacerta species ( Bauwens and Verheyen 1987 ; Olsson and Shine 1997 ; Marco and Pérez-Mellado 1998 ; Galán and Rúa 2003 ). Even assuming a significant relationship between mother and offspring size, it should be noted that the inheritance function has a small impact on the P. lilfordi life cycle (see Supplementary Figure S1 ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Contrasting size-dependent life history strategies of an insular lizard

2020

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In many species with continuous growth, body size is an important driver of life-history tactics and its relative importance is thought to reflect the spatio-temporal variability of selective pressures. We developed a deterministic size-dependent integral projection model for 3 insular neighboring lizard populations with contrasting adult body sizes to investigate how size-related selective pressures can influence lizard life-history tactics. For each population, we broke down differences in population growth rates into contributions from size-dependent body growth, survival, and fecundity. A life table response experiment (LTRE) was used to compare the population dynamics of the 3 populations and quantify the contributions of intrinsic demographic coefficients of each population to the population growth rate (λ). Perturbation analyses revealed that the largest adults contributed the most to the population growth rate, but this was not true in the population with the smallest adults and size-independent fertility. Although we were not able to identify a single factor responsible for this difference, the combination of the demographic model on a continuous trait coupled with an LTRE analysis revealed how individuals from sister populations of the same species follow different life strategies and showed different compensatory mechanisms among survival, individual body growth, and fertility. Our results indicate that body size can play a contrasting role even in closely-related and closely-spaced populations.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Contrasting size-dependent life history strategies of an insular lizard

2020

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“…6Mean hatchling mass and mean body length of reproducing females in different populations of Zootoca vivipara and other European species of the family Lacertidae. Data for Z. vivipara are from “Appendix”; data for other species are from: Arribas and Galán (2005), Castilla and Bauwens (2000), Galán (1999), Galán and Vicente (2003), Ji and Braña (2000), Ljubisavljević et al (2007, 2012), Rúa and Galán (2003)…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variation of Reproductive Traits and Female Body Size in the Most Widely-Ranging Terrestrial Reptile: Testing the Effects of Reproductive Mode, Lineage, and Climate

et al. 2013

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The European common lizard, Zootoca vivipara, is the most widespread terrestrial reptile in the world. It occupies almost the entire Northern Eurasia and includes four viviparous and two oviparous lineages. We analysed how female snout-vent length (SVL), clutch size (CS), hatchling mass (HM), and relative clutch mass (RCM) is associated with the reproductive mode and climate throughout the species range and across the evolutionary lineages within Z. vivipara. The studied variables were scored for 1,280 females and over 3,000 hatchlings from 44 geographically distinct study samples. Across the species range, SVL of reproductive females tends to decrease in less continental climates, whereas CS corrected for female SVL and RCM tend to decrease in climates with cool summer. Both relationships are likely to indicate direct phenotypic responses to climate. For viviparous lineages, the pattern of co-variation between female SVL, CS and HM among populations is similar to that between individual females within populations. Consistent with the hypothesis that female reproductive output is constrained by her body volume, the oviparous clade with shortest retention of eggs in utero showed highest HM, the oviparous clade with longer egg retention showed lower HM, and clades with the longest egg retention (viviparous forms) had lowest HM. Viviparous populations exhibited distinctly lower HM than the other European lacertids of similar female SVL, many of them also displaying unusually high RCM. This pattern is consistent with Winkler and Wallin’s model predicting a negative evolutionary link between the total reproductive investment and allocation to individual offspring.

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Chronicle of an extinction foretold: genetic properties of an extremely small population of Iberolacerta monticola

2011

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The fragmentation and destruction of natural habitats by human intervention is producing a continuous and inexorable reduction of the size of populations in multitude of species all over the world. Small and isolated populations face higher extinction risks, due to demographic and environmental stochasticity, and also because of several genetic threats, among which inbreeding is considered the most important one. For many of these species, the extinction of a population is an irreversible event, so that determining the immediate importance of these risk factors and understanding their interactions is crucial for conservation plans. Iberolacerta monticola is a small lacertid endemic to the northwestern Iberian Peninsula, distributed mainly across moderate/high altitude mountainous regions. Some populations are found nearly at sea-level, though, in fluvial valleys with relict Atlantic forests, in the severely fragmented western part of its range. One of them has been dramatically reduced over the last 30 years, and presently is on the brink of extinction. Using microsatellite nuclear markers, we obtained different measures of genetic variation at this site, together with demographic and breeding data. Both the level of heterozygosity and the number of alleles per locus indicate that the level of variation in this population is comparatively high, and the average inbreeding coefficient is very low. Individuals appear healthy and long-lived, and are related by a few different lines of descent. These findings are discussed in the context of current theories and experimental evidence of associative overdominance and purging of the genetic load of populations, with special emphasis on the evolutionary potential of recovery of small evolutionary units.

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Reproductive characteristics of a lowland population of an alpine lizard: Lacerta monticola (Squamata, Lacertidae) in north-west Spain

Cited by 9 publications

References 57 publications

Contrasting size-dependent life history strategies of an insular lizard

Contrasting size-dependent life history strategies of an insular lizard

Variation of Reproductive Traits and Female Body Size in the Most Widely-Ranging Terrestrial Reptile: Testing the Effects of Reproductive Mode, Lineage, and Climate

Chronicle of an extinction foretold: genetic properties of an extremely small population of Iberolacerta monticola

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