Cooling down is as important as warming up for a large-bodied tropical reptile.

Abstract

An ectotherm's performance and physiological function are strongly tied to environmental temperature, and many ectotherms thermoregulate behaviourally to reach optimum body temperatures. Tropical ectotherms are already living in environments matching their thermal tolerance range and may be expected to conform to environmental temperatures. We tracked the body temperatures (T_b) of 163 estuarine crocodiles across 13 years and compared T_b of 39 crocodiles to water temperature gathered using fish-borne sensors (T_w) across 3 years (2015-2018). While T_b largely conformed closely to T_w, we found inter- and intra-individual differences in relative body temperature (T_b-T_w) that depended on sex and body size as well as the time of day and year. Deviations from T_w, especially during the warm parts of the year, suggest that thermoregulatory behaviour was taking place: we found patterns of warming and cooling events that seemed to mediate this variation in T_b. Thermoregulatory behaviour was observed most frequently in larger individuals, with warming events common during winter and cooling events common during summer. By observing free-ranging animals across multiple years, we found that estuarine crocodiles show yearly patterns of active cooling and warming behaviours that modify their body temperature, highlighting their resilience in the face of recent climate warming. Our work also provides the first evidence for thermal type in large-bodied reptiles.