Fig 1.
Scheme of the experimental setting used in this study.
The five sections, 20 cm each, were only virtual and lizards had full access to every spot in the gradient. Just as an example, a lizard is depicted during thermoregulation in the most used section (see results). The two treatments differed only by the water container being full or empty.
Fig 2.
Distributions of the body temperatures selected by four lacertid species when water was either available in the gradient (solid lines) or not (dashed lines).
Y-axis represents standardized (density) frequency of use for each body temperature. Closed arrows represent mean values; open arrows represent the modes (see Table 1 for the numerical values).
Table 1.
Comparison of mean, median and interquartile range of the preferred body temperature of four lacertid (Podarcis) species when water was either available or not in the gradients.
Values after ± represent the standard deviation. Paired Cohen’s d for the mean difference are calculated after Cohen (1988).
Fig 3.
Hourly-based body temperature selected by the four lacertid species when water was either available in the gradient (solid lines and dots) or not (dashed lines and triangles).
Vertical bars represent standard errors. Shaded areas represent 95% confidence intervals.
Fig 4.
Spatial use of the gradients of four species of lacertid lizards.
The x-axis represents the six areas into which each gradient was virtually divided. The leftmost part represents the refuge location, while the rightmost position was directly below the heating lamp. The left y-axis represents the available temperature in the gradient for each position (S3 Table and S1 Fig, Supporting Information for details on how it was estimated). The right y-axis represents the count of lizards for each position. Dark grey bars were counts for lizard when water was available in the gradient, while light grey bars represent lizards that had no access to water. The dark triangles represent the mean environmental temperature as measured by dataloggers for each segment of the gradient.
Fig 5.
The species-specific relationship between preferred body temperature and water loss corrected for individual weights.
Table 2.
Body mass after 24 h either with or without access to water in the gradients.
Differences in body mass are expressed both in grams and in percentages. Values are rounded to the second decimal value.