ArticleEvolution letters2023
Maternal behavioral thermoregulation facilitated evolutionary transitions from egg laying to live birth.
Article in Evolution letters, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Live birth in lizards: A process-based model for the roles of temperature, behavior, and life-history.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Prenatal conditions do not affect brain physiology and learning in a lizard.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Multi-response phylogenetic mixed models: concepts and application.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Live birth is a key innovation that has evolved from egg-laying ancestors over 100 times in reptiles. However, egg-laying lizards and snakes can have preferred body temperatures that are lethal to developing embryos, which should select against prolonged egg retention. Here, we demonstrate that thermal mismatches between mothers and offspring are widespread across the squamate phylogeny. This mismatch is resolved by gravid females adjusting their body temperature towards the thermal optimum of their embryos. We find that the same response occurs in both live-bearing and egg-laying species, despite the latter only retaining embryos during the early stages of development. Importantly, phylogenetic reconstructions suggest this thermoregulatory behavior in gravid females evolved in egg-laying species prior to the evolution of live birth. Maternal thermoregulatory behavior, therefore, bypasses the constraints imposed by a slowly evolving thermal physiology and has likely been a key facilitator in the repeated transition to live birth.
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