Living in a Thermally Diverse Environment: Field Body Temperatures and Thermoregulation in Hermann’s Tortoise, Testudo hermanni, in Montenegro

Reptiles live in a range of different habitats from tropical forests to temperate zones where the climate may change on seasonal or daily basis. The thermal environment is major determinant how efficiently they can achieve optimum preferred body temperatures and, terms physiologically temperatures, these not be possible natural environment. In this paper, null models have been employed evaluate thermoregulatory efficiency Hermann’s tortoise, Testudo hermanni, high summer central Montenegro when study area defined as low-cost and thus we assumed that tortoises should able an efficient level thermoregulation. However, results varied depended operated weather conditions. High levels were found during sunny areas with abundant patches shade sunlit areas. These reflected placed females cooler cloudy effort increased. Model partially shaded better agreement tortoise than other Tortoise closer set point any either open sunny, areas, indicating movement was non-random due active