Animals spend a considerable proportion of their life span at rest. However, resting status has often been overlooked when investigating how species respond to environmental conditions. This may induce a large bias in understanding the local adaptation of species across environmental gradients and their vulnerability to potential environmental change. Here, we conducted an empirical study on montane agamid lizards, combined with mechanistic modeling, to compare elevational variations in body temperature and metabolisms (cumulative digestion and maintenance cost) between resting and active status. Our study on three populations of an agamid lizard along an elevational gradient revealed a trend of decreasing body temperature toward higher elevations, the main contributor of which was resting status of the lizards. Using population‐specific reaction norms, we predicted greater elevational variation in hourly and cumulative digestion for resting lizards than for active lizards. Climate‐change impacts, estimated as the change in cumulative digestion, also show greater elevational variation when resting status is factored into the analysis. Further, our global analysis of 98 agamid species revealed that in about half of their combined distributional range, the contribution of resting status in determining the elevational variation in cumulative digestion and maintenance cost of lizards was greater than the contribution made by a lizard's active status. Our study highlights the importance of considering resting status when investigating how species respond to environmental conditions, especially for those distributed over tropical and subtropical mountain areas.

中文翻译：

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静息状态分析揭示了蜥蜴新陈代谢的明显海拔变化


动物一生中相当一部分时间是在休息中度过的。然而，在研究物种对环境条件的反应时，休息状态常常被忽视。这可能会在理解物种跨环境梯度的局部适应及其对潜在环境变化的脆弱性的理解上产生很大的偏差。在这里，我们对山地蜥蜴进行了一项实证研究，并结合机械模型，比较静息状态和活动状态之间体温和新陈代谢（累积消化和维持成本）的海拔变化。我们对沿着海拔梯度的三个蜥蜴种群进行的研究揭示了体温向高海拔方向下降的趋势，其主要原因是蜥蜴的休息状态。使用种群特定的反应规范，我们预测休息蜥蜴的每小时和累积消化量的海拔变化比活跃蜥蜴更大。当将静息状态纳入分析时，气候变化的影响（以累积消化的变化来估计）也显示出更大的海拔变化。此外，我们对 98 个蜥蜴物种的全球分析表明，在大约一半的综合分布范围中，休息状态对蜥蜴累积消化和维护成本的海拔变化的贡献大于蜥蜴活跃状态的贡献。我们的研究强调了在调查物种如何响应环境条件时考虑静止状态的重要性，特别是对于那些分布在热带和亚热带山区的物种。