Demography Meets Climate Change: Life History Challenges for a Neotropical Viviparous Lizard

Considering the current biodiversity crisis, it is crucial to understand the impact of global environmental changes on natural populations. Analyzing demographic parameters from long-term studies is the most effective approach to uncovering patterns that describe population dynamics. These patterns can then be linked to the environmental factors driving these dynamics, providing an accurate understanding of how environmental changes affect natural populations. This study aims to build a demographic distribution model of <i>Notomabuya frenata</i>, a Neotropical viviparous lizard, to investigate its potential responses to environmental changes. Using mark-recapture data collected over more than 15 years, we built Integral Projection Models (IPMs) to project population trajectories across time and space based on relationships among vital rates, body size, and environmental covariates. Our work indicates that this species is positioned in the middle of the "slow-fast" life-history continuum of lizards, with early maturity and intermediate survivorship. We also demonstrate that it is already experiencing impacts from rising global mean temperatures, which compromise individuals' survival and ultimately reduce population growth, particularly at the northwestern periphery of its distribution. The spatially explicit approach we applied enables an understanding of the demographic consequences of climate-induced environmental variability across different locations, recognizing that the projected impacts of climate change are unevenly distributed.