ABSTRACT
Background: West Siberia is a large region in North Eurasia, which harbours multiple climatic zones, landscape types and biomes. Its amphibian fauna is characterised by a combination of European and Asian species. For many species, this region is the place where the limits of their global ranges are located (Ranatemporaria, R.amurensis, Bufotessitibundus). West Siberia also has at least two non-native amphibian species (Pelophylaxridibundus, Bufotesviridis). The exact ranges and patterns of distribution of the West Siberian amphibian species are poorly studied. The mapping of species ranges is important for the development of conservation measures and monitoring of invasive species is required to investigate their impacts on the natural ecosystems. New information: This work presents the most complete biogeographic and occurrence records database of the amphibians of West Siberia. To assemble the database, we digitised data from 190 published works, obtained data from major museum collections and from the data bank on the abundance and distribution of animals «Zoomonitor¼ by the Zoomonitoring laboratory of the Institute of Systematics and Ecology of Animals, Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences. The database also includes original and partly unpublished data collected by the authors from 1975 to 2021, as well as quality-assessed citizen science data from the iNaturalist portal. In total, the database contains 2530 records for 11 species of amphibians, including the locality data, the observation date (when known) and the source of the observation (at least one of the following: literature reference, museum sample ID, observer's name, iNaturalist link).
ABSTRACT
Reproductive mode, ancestry, and climate are hypothesized to determine body size variation in reptiles but their effects have rarely been estimated simultaneously, especially at the intraspecific level. The common lizard (Zootoca vivipara) occupies almost the entire Northern Eurasia and includes viviparous and oviparous lineages, thus representing an excellent model for such studies. Using body length data for >10,000 individuals from 72 geographically distinct populations over the species' range, we analyzed how sex-specific adult body size and sexual size dimorphism (SSD) is associated with reproductive mode, lineage identity, and several climatic variables. Variation in male size was low and poorly explained by our predictors. In contrast, female size and SSD varied considerably, demonstrating significant effects of reproductive mode and particularly seasonality. Populations of the western oviparous lineage (northern Spain, south-western France) exhibited a smaller female size and less female-biased SSD than those of the western viviparous (France to Eastern Europe) and the eastern viviparous (Eastern Europe to Far East) lineages; this pattern persisted even after controlling for climatic effects. The phenotypic response to seasonality was complex: across the lineages, as well as within the eastern viviparous lineage, female size and SSD increase with increasing seasonality, whereas the western viviparous lineage followed the opposing trends. Altogether, viviparous populations seem to follow a saw-tooth geographic cline, which might reflect the nonmonotonic relationship of body size at maturity in females with the length of activity season. This relationship is predicted to arise in perennial ectotherms as a response to environmental constraints caused by seasonality of growth and reproduction. The SSD allometry followed the converse of Rensch's rule, a rare pattern for amniotes. Our results provide the first evidence of opposing body size-climate relationships in intraspecific units.
ABSTRACT
The European common lizard, Zootoca vivipara, is the most widespread terrestrial reptile in the world. It occupies almost the entire Northern Eurasia and includes four viviparous and two oviparous lineages. We analysed how female snout-vent length (SVL), clutch size (CS), hatchling mass (HM), and relative clutch mass (RCM) is associated with the reproductive mode and climate throughout the species range and across the evolutionary lineages within Z. vivipara. The studied variables were scored for 1,280 females and over 3,000 hatchlings from 44 geographically distinct study samples. Across the species range, SVL of reproductive females tends to decrease in less continental climates, whereas CS corrected for female SVL and RCM tend to decrease in climates with cool summer. Both relationships are likely to indicate direct phenotypic responses to climate. For viviparous lineages, the pattern of co-variation between female SVL, CS and HM among populations is similar to that between individual females within populations. Consistent with the hypothesis that female reproductive output is constrained by her body volume, the oviparous clade with shortest retention of eggs in utero showed highest HM, the oviparous clade with longer egg retention showed lower HM, and clades with the longest egg retention (viviparous forms) had lowest HM. Viviparous populations exhibited distinctly lower HM than the other European lacertids of similar female SVL, many of them also displaying unusually high RCM. This pattern is consistent with Winkler and Wallin's model predicting a negative evolutionary link between the total reproductive investment and allocation to individual offspring.
