Data for "Maternal nest-site choice in response to saline substates differs between an island and inland population of lizards"

Abstract

The capacity for oviparous animals to recognize and choose suitable nesting habitats impacts offspring development. Species that occupy a wide range of habitats often exhibit variation in nest-site choice in response to specific environmental cues (e.g., temperature, predator threats). Salinity of nesting substrates might also generate variation, particularly across coastal to inland regions that are exposed to different levels of seawater inundation due to tides or hurricanes. To address this, we compared nest-site choice of the brown anole lizard (Anolis sagrei) between an island population that frequently experiences seawater inundation and an inland population that rarely, if ever, experiences inundation. We tested the hypothesis that females would avoid nesting in salty soils because it negatively affects egg hatching success, and that this avoidance would be greater for the island population (which frequently experiences this cue) than for the inland population (which is naïve to this cue). We provided females from each population with two different nesting substrates (soil mixed with freshwater versus saltwater). Subsequently, we incubated their eggs under these two conditions to quantify the effects on embryo survival. We found that females from the island avoided nesting in soil mixed with saltwater, whereas females from the inland population exhibited no preference. Water loss and mortality rates of eggs also increased under incubation in soil with saltwater. These patterns imply that females from island populations may have an adaptive behavioral response to soil salinity, whereas inland females have not developed a response to this novel cue. These results have important implications for understanding how populations might respond to changes in salinity under climate change in coastal or island regions (e.g., sea level rise, increased hurricanes).