Author:
Storniolo Federico,Mangiacotti Marco,Zuffi Marco A. L.,Scali Stefano,Sacchi Roberto
Abstract
AbstractColour variability is largely widespread in the animal world as it is tightly associated with fitness and survivorship. Therefore, the drivers and implications of such variability have been of great interest for zoologists in the past decades. Reptiles are excellent models to investigate colour variations and expression under different conditions. Here, we focused on melanism occurrence in the two main lineages of Hierophis viridiflavus at the scale of the species distribution, by extracting available data from iNaturalist, a citizen science network, with the aim of detecting any pure effect of climate or local habitat on colour expression. Our analyses highlighted that habitat does not explain differences in phenotypes, whereas marked effects of geographic and climatic variables were detected. However, the observed climatic effects could be a proxy of the geographical distribution of the two groups, and thus the high occurrence of bright colourations in western populations of the eastern lineage could be addressed to an ongoing event of asymmetric gene flow in contact zones. The current distribution of phenotypes could be the outcome of the evolutionary history of the species combined with the geological history of the Mediterranean region. This investigation, though, is only preliminary and molecular analyses on highly variable regions of the genome are mandatory to address this issue.
Funder
Università degli Studi di Pavia
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Reference63 articles.
1. Alho JS, Herczeg G, Söderman F, Laurilia A, Jönsson KI, Merilä J (2010) Increasing melanism along a latitudinal gradient in a widespread amphibian: local adaptation, ontogenic or environmental plasticity? BMC Ecol Evol 10:1–9. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-10-317
2. Andrén C, Nilson G (1981) Reproductive success and risk of predation in normal and melanistic colour morphs of the adder Vipera berus. Biol J Linn Soc 15:235–246. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-8312.1981.tb00761.x
3. Barve V, Hart E (2021) rinat: access ‘iNaturalist’ data through APIs. R package version 0.1.8. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rinat
4. Bittner TD, King RB, Kerfin JM (2002) Effects of body size and melanism on the thermal biology of garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis). Copeia 2002:477–482. https://doi.org/10.1643/0045-8511(2002)002
5. Bivand R, Rundel C (2021) rgeos: interface to geometry engine—open source (‘GEOS’). R package version 0.5-9. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rgeos
Cited by
3 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献