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How do the physiological traits of a lizard change during its invasion of an oceanic island?

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Abstract

Physiology is crucial for the survival of invasive species in new environments. Yet, new climatic conditions and the limited genetic variation found within many invasive populations may influence physiological responses to new environmental conditions. Here, we studied the case of the delicate skinks (Lampropholis delicata) invading Lord Howe Island (LHI), Australia. On LHI, the climate is different from the mainland source of the skinks, and independent introduction events generated invasive populations with distinct genetic backgrounds. To understand how climate and genetic background may shape physiological responses along biological invasions, we compared the physiological traits of a source and two invasive (single-haplotype and multi-haplotype) populations of the delicate skink. For each population, we quantified physiological traits related to metabolism, sprint speed, and thermal physiology. We found that, for most physiological traits analysed, population history did not influence the ecophysiology of delicate skinks. However, invasive populations showed higher maximum speed than the source population, which indicates that locomotor performance might be a trait under selection during biological invasions. As well, the invasive population with a single haplotype was less cold-tolerant than the multi-haplotype and source populations. Our results suggest that limited genetic variability and climate may influence physiological responses of invasive organisms in novel environments. Incorporating the interplay between genetic and physiological responses into models predicting species invasions can result in more accurate understanding of the potential habitats those species can occupy.

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Fig. 1

available at Bureau of Meteorology (2021); see also Supplementary material. Populations of Lampropholis delicata have been established in LHI in the 1980s. Dashed lines represent the mean monthly maximum and minimum temperatures across the years. For more details of the historical climate for Coffs Harbour and LHI see Tables S1, S2 and S3

Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

source population (Coffs Harbour), invasive-multi-haplotype (central region of LHI) and invasive-single-haplotype (North Bay) invasive populations of Lampropholis delicata. The grey dots represent individual observations for each population

Fig. 5

source population (Coffs Harbour), invasive-multi-haplotype (central region of LHI) and invasive-single-haplotype (North Bay) invasive populations of Lampropholis delicata. The dots represent the average speed at each temperature, and the whiskers represent the standard deviation

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Acknowledgements

We thank three anonymous reviewers, and the handling editor, for their insightful comments.

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  1. Alyse Young and Rodolfo O. Anderson contributed equally to the manuscript.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Science, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    Alyse Young, Rodolfo O. Anderson, Annalise Naimo, Lesley A. Alton, Celine T. Goulet & David G. Chapple

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  1. Alyse Young
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  2. Rodolfo O. Anderson
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  3. Annalise Naimo
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Contributions

DGC, CTG and AY conceived and designed the experiments; AN conducted the fieldwork; AY performed the experiments; AY, CTG and ROA performed the analyses; ROA and AY wrote the first version of the manuscript. All authors contributed to and approved the final version. ROA and AY contributed equally to the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Rodolfo O. Anderson.

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Human/Animal rights

All animal experiments were approved by the Animal Ethics Committee—School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, reference number 16736. All patients included in this study gave consent to participate in this research and to publish the data contained within this article. All the data used in this study are provided in the manuscript; the data can also be found in Bridges data repository (https://doi.org/10.26180/16864024).

Additional information

Communicated by Donald Miles.

Our study examines how climate and intraspecific genetic variation may influence the physiological traits of an invasive species.

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Young, A., Anderson, R.O., Naimo, A. et al. How do the physiological traits of a lizard change during its invasion of an oceanic island?. Oecologia 198, 567–578 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-021-05054-y

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