Interplay of Genotypic and Thermal Effects on Sex Determination Shapes Climatic Distribution in Herpetofauna

Nemesházi, Edina and Bókony, Veronika (2025) Interplay of Genotypic and Thermal Effects on Sex Determination Shapes Climatic Distribution in Herpetofauna. GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY, 34 (7). No. e70096. ISSN 1466-822X

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Abstract

Sex is a fundamental trait of many organisms, and sex-determination systems are diverse across the tree of life. Environmental temperature can influence sexual development not only in temperature-dependent sex-determination systems, but also in species with genotypic sex determination (GSD). Temperature-induced sex reversal, resulting from combined effects of GSD and environmental temperatures, may greatly affect population dynamics and extinction risk. However, the scarcity of research on sex reversal has constrained the assessment of its evolutionary-ecological significance. We assessed if climatic distribution differs between female-heterogametic (ZW/ZZ) and male-heterogametic (XX/XY) species in herpetofauna when taking into account thermal reaction norms (TRN; i.e., how temperature affects progeny sex ratio), as suggested by the ‘asymmetrical sex reversal’ theory.

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