Lizards could be warming faster than climate

Global annual mean temperatures increased 0.748C in the second half of the 20th century and projections are for even greater increases in the 21st century (Solomon et al. 2007). But how do such increases in air tempera- ture a?ect species on the ground? Studies examining climate change e?ects on species distributions inves- tigate the relationship between the distributions of species and atmospheric variables, such as air tempera- ture. ?e projections of altered species distributions are then made assuming that the e?ects of climate change on species are proportional to changes in the variables used for modelling (Araújo et al. 2006). But even with ecto- therms – that regulate their body temperature from external heat sources – changes in body temperature are not expected to equal changes in air temperature. We measure di?erences in air temperature and expected body temperature (opera- tive temperature) of a non-thermoregulating ectotherm with the convective and radiative properties of a lizard across the Iberian Peninsula, Supplementary material Appendix 1. Mean operative temperatures were calculated for every 5-yr interval between 1956–2010, using well- known biophysical equations (Bakken and Gates 1975) and outputs from a new Regional Climate Model (RCM). ?e RCM was dynamically downscaled at 5 ? 5 km resolu- tion with hourly climate estimates across the entire period of time considered (Prasad Dasari et al. 2014). Expected operative temperatures were then compared with air tem- peratures. ?e latest climatic numerical downscalings for Europe have a maximum horizontal resolution of 25 km (Haylock et al. 2008, Kendon et al. 2010) or 12 km (Jacob et al. 2014). ?e RCM downscaling used in this study has a horizontal resolution of 5 km (Prasad Dasari et al. 2014) making it, to our knowledge, the highest resolution avail- able for the Iberian Peninsula and Europe. ?is spatial resolution is similar to that of previous studies modelling the relationship between reptiles and climate and operative temperatures (Kearney and Porter 2004, Buckley 2010).