Data from: Tick exposure and extreme climate events impact survival and threaten the persistence of a long-lived lizard

1. Assessing the impacts of multiple, often synergistic, stressors on the
population dynamics of long-lived species is becoming increasingly
important due to recent and future global change. 2. Tiliqua rugosa
(sleepy lizard) is a long-lived skink (>30 years) that is adapted
to survive in semi-arid environments with varying levels of parasite
exposure and highly seasonal food availability. We used an exhaustive
database of 30-years of capture-mark-recapture records to quantify the
impacts of both parasite exposure and environmental conditions on the
lizard's survival rates and long-term population dynamics. 3. Lizard
abundance was relatively stable throughout the study period; however there
were changing patterns in adult and juvenile apparent survival rates,
driven by spatial and temporal variation in levels of tick exposure and
temporal variation in environmental conditions. Extreme weather events
during the winter and spring seasons were identified as important
environmental drivers of survival. 4. Climate models predict a dramatic
increase in the frequency of extreme hot and dry winter and spring seasons
in our South Australian study region; from a contemporary probability of
0.17 up to 0.47 - 0.83 in 2080 depending on the emissions scenario. Our
stochastic population model projections showed that these future climatic
conditions will induce a decline in the abundance of this long-lived
reptile of up to 67% within 30 years from 2080, under worst case scenario
modelling. 5. The results have broad implications for future work
investigating the drivers of population dynamics and persistence. We
highlight the importance of long-term datasets and accounting for
synergistic impacts between multiple stressors. We show that predicted
increases in the frequency of extreme climate events have the potential to
considerably and negatively influence a long-lived species, which might
previously have been assumed to be resilient to environmental
perturbations.

1. 在近期及未来全球变化的背景下，评估多种（通常具有协同作用的）压力因子对长寿物种种群动态的影响正变得日益重要。
2. 松果蜥（Tiliqua rugosa，俗称sleepy lizard）是一种长寿石龙子（寿命超过30年），适应于在寄生虫暴露水平多变、食物供应高度季节性的半干旱环境中生存。我们利用包含30年标记重捕法（capture-mark-recapture）记录的详尽数据库，量化了寄生虫暴露及环境条件对该蜥蜴存活率和长期种群动态的影响。
3. 在整个研究期间，蜥蜴的种群数量相对稳定；然而，成体和幼体的表观存活率呈现出变化模式，这主要由蜱虫暴露水平的时空变化及环境条件的时间变化所驱动。冬春季的极端天气事件被确定为影响存活率的关键环境驱动因子。
4. 气候模型预测，在我们位于南澳大利亚的研究区域，极端炎热干燥的冬春季发生频率将显著上升：当前发生概率为0.17，到2080年，根据排放情景的不同，该概率将升至0.47至0.83之间。我们的随机种群模型预测显示，在最坏情景模拟下，这些未来气候条件将导致这种长寿爬行动物的种群数量在2080年起的30年内下降高达67%。
5. 本研究结果对未来探究种群动态及存续驱动因子的工作具有广泛启示。我们强调了长期数据集的重要性，以及考虑多种压力因子间协同影响的必要性。研究表明，极端气候事件发生频率的预测性上升可能对长寿物种产生显著的负面影响——这类物种此前常被认为对环境扰动具有恢复力。