Unusual mating behavior of Apathya cappadocica in the winter season from southeastern Anatolia

Abstract

Ectothermic organisms, like terrestrial reptiles have very strong physiological tendency to maintain a stable internal environment with buffering the effects of outer conditions. However, they mostly tend to regulate their homeostasis in winter season via hibernation strategy. The members of family Lacertidae are hibernating reptiles, which have relatively rare winter activities. Although winter basking activity might serve a variety of biotic regulations in different species, the Anatolian lizards, Apathya cappadocica has not been documented for its winter activity so far. In this study, it is presented that the mating behavior of A. cappadocica in warming period in February 2019 from Siirt, Turkey. Any mating observation in this period has not been reported in literature in the Anatolian Peninsula up to date. The climatic oscillation with consequent extraordinarily warm days in winter might cause fluctuations in species phenology traits. However, this situation might also possess several risks in many aspects (i.e. early embryonic development, foraging, escaping from the predators) for the offsprings.