To heat or to save time? Thermoregulation in the lizard<i>Zootoca vivipara</i>(Squamata: Lacertidae) in different thermal environments along an altitudinal gradient
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Behavioural regulation of body temperature in thermally heterogeneous habitats requires different amounts of time that could otherwise be dedicated to foraging and social activities. In this study I examined how four populations of the lizard Zootoca vivipara along an altitudinal gradient (250-1450 m) adjust their thermal-physiology traits and thermoregulatory behaviour to compensate for increasing time costs of thermoregulation. I focused on variation in several physiological (set-point temperature, heating rate) and behavioural traits (microhabitat selection, basking frequency, extent of thermoregulation). To estimate potential time spent basking and foraging by lizards that were not employing any behavioural compensatory mechanism, I used a simple biophysical model of thermoregulation, including information about operative temperatures at the study sites, selected temperature range, and heating/cooling rates. Time costs of thermoregulation for each population were calculated as potential time spent basking relative to time spent foraging. Operative temperatures varied among study sites, resulting in different time costs of thermoregulation. Lizards at 1450 m should spend about 50% more time basking than those at 250 m. I found that the only mechanism which potentially compensated for the higher time costs incurred at high altitudes was a shift in the choice of basking sites. Lizards thermoregulated with similar accuracy and effectiveness over the 1200-m altitudinal range, indicating that there were no adjustments in the extent of thermoregulation. The observed basking frequencies of lizards were highly correlated with potential time spent basking without behavioural adjustments, suggesting a minor compensatory effect of thermoregulatory behaviour. Lizards responded to higher time costs of thermoregulation primarily by allocating different amounts of time to basking. These results suggest that Z. vivipara regulated body temperature at the expense of time that could be devoted to other activities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".