Loss of largest and oldest individuals of the Montpellier snake correlates with recent war

Loss of largest and oldest individuals of the Montpellier snake correlates with recent warming

in the southeastern Iberian Peninsula

Cosme

L(O)PEZ-CALDER(O)N;Mónica

FERICHE;Esmeralda

ALAMINOS;Juan

M.PLEGUEZUELOS

【期刊名称】《动物学报（英文版）》 【年(卷),期】2017(063)006

【摘要】The effects of climate change on organisms are now being extensively studied in many different taxa.However,the variation in body size,usually shrinkage in response to increasing temperature,has received little attention regarding to reptiles.During past periods of global warming,many organisms shrank in size,and current evidence and experiments manipulating temperature have shown a biomass decrease in some organisms with increasing temperatures.Here we test whether the body size of the Montpellier snake Malpolon monspessulanus from the southeastern Iberian Peninsula is changing and correlated with the increasing temperature in this region during a 39-year period (1976-2014).We measured the snout-vent length (SVL) of vouchers in scientific collections to check for trends in adult body size at the population level in relation with temperature,while controlling

for

the

age

of

the

individuals

(estimated

by

skeletochronology,n=141).Given the great ontogenetic variation in body