
Ian CliftonUniversity of Arkansas at Little Rock | UALR · Department of Biology
Ian Clifton
Doctor of Philosophy
About
15
Publications
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
April 2022 - December 2023
August 2016 - April 2022
August 2014 - July 2016
Education
August 2016 - May 2021
August 2014 - July 2016
August 2009 - May 2013
Publications
Publications (15)
Thermal acclimatization, plastic shifts in thermal physiology in response to recent climatic conditions, is thought to be adaptive in highly seasonal environments where thermal variability is high but predictable. Thus, lizards from mid-latitude, desert environments should exhibit plasticity in their thermal tolerance limits, the upper (CTmax) and...
Both intra‐ and interspecific interactions play crucial roles in defining the structure of ecological communities. However, the specific behavioral processes underlying this structuring are often unclear and must be inferred from contemporary interactions. Rapid spread of nonnative species has resulted in increasingly homogenized communities, and t...
Environmental variables, such as resource quality, shape growth in organisms, dictating body size, an important correlate of fitness. Variation in prey characteristics among populations is frequently associated with similar variation in predator body sizes. Anthropogenic alterations to prey landscapes impose novel ecological pressures on predators...
Daily activity patterns of free‐ranging wildlife affect a wide range of ecological and physiological processes and, in turn are affected by anthropogenic disturbances to the environment. However, obtaining a continuous record of activity without disturbing wild animals is logistically challenging. We used commercially available, multi‐purpose light...
Predicting ecological responses to rapid environmental change has become one of the greatest challenges of modern biology. One of the major hurdles in forecasting these responses is accurately quantifying the thermal environments that organisms experience. The distribution of temperatures available within an organism’s habitat is typically measured...
Variation in prey characteristics among populations is frequently associated with similar variation in predator body sizes. Increasingly, human-mediated alterations in prey landscapes impose unique ecological pressures on predators that may lead to rapid shifts in predator body size. Here, we ask whether adult body size differences among population...
Global climate change involves both prolonged periods of higher‐than‐normal temperatures and short but extreme heat waves. Both types of temperature increases are likely to be detrimental to ectotherms, and even if such temperature increases do not cause mortality directly, compensating for such temperature increases will likely entail costs to org...
An individual’s morphology is shaped by the environmental pressures it experiences, and the resulting morphological response is the culmination of both genetic factors and environmental (non‐genetic) conditions experienced early in its life (i.e., phenotypic plasticity). The role phenotypic plasticity plays in shaping phenotypes is important, but e...
A variety of phenotypic traits in reptiles are affected by conditions during embryonic development, a phenomenon known as developmental plasticity. In particular, many traits in which expression changes with temperature, such as locomotor performance or growth rates, are also developmentally plastic. However, much less is known about the extent to...
Thermoregulatory behaviour enables ectotherms to maintain preferred body temperatures across a range of environmental conditions, and it may buffer individuals against the effects of climate warming. In lizards, the mechanism underlying variation in thermoregulatory behaviour has long been assumed to be phenotypic plasticity, and while this assumpt...
Mean prey size often varies across landscapes, resulting in predator populations having differing access to energetic resources. Shifts in resource quality are likely to cause differences in energy allocation of reproduction. Thus, additional energy intake may lead to (i) increased offspring size, (ii) increased numbers of offspring, (iii) increase...
Colonization of new areas is accompanied by a variety of novel pressures, which can lead to rapid phenotypic change. We compared morphology of diamond-backed watersnakes (Nerodia rhombifer) among populations of recently colonized fish farms to examine responses to a potential selective pressure, prey size and evaluated intersexual differences in ph...