Thermoperiodic and photoperiodic influences on daily and seasonal changes in the physiology of the male green anole,Anolis carolinensis

✍ Scribed by Noeske, Teresa A. ;Meier, Albert H.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 657 KB
• Volume: 226
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-104X
• DOI: 10.1002/jez.1402260202

✦ Synopsis

Male green anole lizards, Anolis carolinensis, were kept for 22 days on one of five temperature regimes: constant 20"C, constant 30"C, or a thermoperiod (8 h at 30°C, 16 h at 20°C) with heat onset at 0, 8, or 16 h after light onset. Groups of animals on each temperature regime were sacrificed a t one of six times of day, every 4 h, for 24 h. The experiment was repeated a t three differer-t times of year: April (animals were kept on a photoperiod of LD 13:11), August (LD 13.5:10.5), and December (LD 10.5:13.5). Weight gain, testes weights, reproductive stage, and abdominal fat body weights varied with the temperature treatment and with the season. Depending on the time of day lizards received the warm temperature phase of the thermoperiod, increased heat could be stimulatory to weight gain and reproductive indexes in comparison to heat treatment at othei times of day. The effect of constant temperatures on testis state and body weight gain was different from that of the thermoperiod regimes and of the natural environment on these processes.

There were also die1 variations in both testis DNA synthesis and fat body lipogenesis in the green anole. The photoperiod appeared to set the daily variation of DNA synthesis in the testis, whereas the thermoperiod phased the daily variation of fat body lipogenesis.