Temperature preferences of reptiles of the Kama Cis-Urals: approaches to determination

Abstract

The paper presents data on the temperature ranking of the chosen substrate for females of five reptile species of the Kama Cis-Urals: common European adder Vipera berus (Linnaeus, 1758), grass snake Natrix natrix (Linnaeus, 1758), sand lizard Lacerta agilis Linnaeus, 1758, viviparous lizard Zootoca vivipara (Lichtenstein, 1823) and eastern slowworm Anguis colchica (Nordmann, 1840). When conducting multiple pairwise comparisons, four statistical tests were used: Student's t-test without Bonferroni correction, Scheffe's test, Mann-Whitney test, and Kruskal-Wallis test. Parametric and non-parametric tests gave similar results. It has been demonstrated that the most correct in such comparisons is the Kruskal-Wallis test, the use of the Student's t-test or the Mann-Whitney test significantly increases the chance of an increase in type I errors (a true null hypothesis is rejected), when using samples with a small number of observations, the probability of a type II error increases (an incorrect null hypothesis is accepted). As a result of the material processing, it was revealed that the most heat-loving species, demanding on the temperature of the substrate, is the sand lizard Lacerta agilis Linnaeus, 1758, while the differences between the average temperatures of the substrate, selected by representatives of other species, do not have statistical significance.