Developmental Temperature Does Not Influence Thermal Preferences but Affects Age at Sexual Maturity in the Tropical...

As rising environmental temperatures can negatively affect some ectothermic animals, it is imperative to anticipate whether and how these organisms could cope with new thermal conditions. Several groups of animals that face constraints to behavioral thermoregulation must rely on phenotypic plasticity to adjust to rising temperatures. Evaluating whether fitness-related traits could plastically change in warmer conditions is critical for predicting how these thermoconformer ectotherms could navigate a changing world. Here, we experimentally manipulated short-term and developmental thermal environments in a thermoconformer population of the Hispaniolan stout anole (Anolis cybotes) to address two complementary goals. We first examined how short-term and/or full development exposure to warmer conditions shape lizards' preferred body temperatures to test for potential plasticity in this fitness-related trait. We then evaluated the potential effects of elevated developmental temperature on growth rate and the age at sexual maturity in females to evaluate how temperature shapes life history traits. We found that neither short-term exposure to elevated temperatures nor developmental temperatures affected the preferred body temperatures of A. cybotes, suggesting that some fitness-related physiological processes are organized within a non-plastic thermal range. By contrast, warmer developmental temperature delayed growth rate and age at sexual maturity in females, which could affect population processes by extending generation times and limiting annual fecundity. Together, this study demonstrates a fitness-related cost associated with warmer temperatures in A. cybotes and suggests that the capacity for tropical ectotherms to plastically buffer rising temperatures may be relatively limited.