Opportunity begets opportunity to drive macroevolutionary dynamics of a diverse lizard radiation.

Evolution proceeds unevenly across the tree of life, with some lineages accumulating diversity more rapidly than others. Explaining this disparity is challenging as similar evolutionary triggers often do not result in analogous shifts across the tree, and similar shifts may reflect different evolutionary triggers. We used a combination of approaches to directly consider such context-dependency and untangle the complex network of processes that shape macroevolutionary dynamics, focusing on Pleurodonta, a diverse radiation of lizards.

Viviparity imparts a macroevolutionary signature of ecological opportunity in the body size of female Liolaemus lizards.

Viviparity evolved ~115 times across squamate reptiles, facilitating the colonization of cold habitats, where oviparous species are scarce or absent. Whether the ecological opportunity furnished by such colonization reconfigures phenotypic diversity and accelerates evolution is unclear. We investigated the association between viviparity and patterns and rates of body size evolution in female Liolaemus lizards, the most species-rich tetrapod genus from temperate regions.

Comparison of Hydric and Thermal Physiology in an Environmentally Diverse Clade of Caribbean Anoles.

As the world becomes warmer and precipitation patterns less predictable, organisms will experience greater heat and water stress. It is crucial to understand the factors that predict variation in thermal and hydric physiology among species. This study focuses on investigating the relationships between thermal and hydric diversity and their environmental predictors in a clade of Hispaniolan anole lizards, which are part of a broader Caribbean adaptive radiation.

Exceptional parallelisms characterize the evolutionary transition to live birth in phrynosomatid lizards.

Viviparity, an innovation enhancing maternal control over developing embryos, has evolved >150 times in vertebrates, and has been proposed as an adaptation to inhabit cold habitats. Yet, the behavioral, physiological, morphological, and life history features associated with live-bearing remain unclear. Here, we capitalize on repeated origins of viviparity in phrynosomatid lizards to tease apart the phenotypic patterns associated with this innovation.

Thermoregulatory strategies of three reclusive lizards (genus Xantusia) from the Baja California peninsula, Mexico, under current and future microenvironmental temperatures.

The thermal quality of the habitat is key for the regulation of body temperature in terrestrial ectotherms and, therefore, permits them to carry out their fundamental biological activities. In thermally heterogeneous environments, ectotherms might follow different behavioral or physiological strategies to maintain their body temperature within biologically adequate boundaries, for which they depend on microhabitat selection. These aspects are, thus, relevant in the context of habitat degradation and land-use change.

A new species of Lepidophyma (Squamata: Xantusiidae) from San Luis Potosí, México, with notes on its physiological ecology.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the descriptions of members of the lizard genus Lepidophyma. Herein, we describe a new species of Lepidophyma from the Huasteca Potosina region of Mexico, previously confused with L. gaigeae, from which it differs in lacking parietal spot, among other characteristics.

Thermal physiology responds to interannual temperature shifts in a montane horned lizard, Phrynosoma orbiculare.

As climate change marches on, rapidly rising temperatures shatter records every year, presenting ever-growing physiological challenges to organisms worldwide. Ectotherms rely on behavioral and physiological plasticity to contend with environmental fluctuations. Nonetheless, our understanding of thermal plasticity has been largely limited to laboratory settings.

Interactions between thermoregulatory behavior and physiological acclimatization in a wild lizard population.

Although the importance of thermoregulation and plasticity as compensatory mechanisms for climate change has long been recognized, they have largely been studied independently. Thus, we know comparatively little about how they interact to shape physiological variation in natural populations. Here, we test the hypothesis that behavioral thermoregulation and thermal acclimatization interact to shape physiological phenotypes in a natural population of the diurnal lizard, Sceloporus torquatus.