Data used in "Masó et al. 2019 Age-dependent effects of moderate differences in environmental predictability forecasted by climate change, experimental evidence from a short-lived lizard (Zootoca vivipara), Scientific Report"

Whether and how differences in environmental predictability affect life-history traits is controversial and may depend on mean environmental conditions. Moreover, robust evidence for the effects of differences in environmental predictability is scarce and limited to extreme events. Thus, the consequences of the currently observed and forecasted climate-change induced reduction of precipitation predictability are largely unknown. Here we experimentally tested whether and how changes in the predictability of precipitation affect growth, reproduction, and survival by exposing European common lizard Zootoca vivipara populations to more and to less predictable precipitation. Predictability of precipitation affected growth and body condition of adults, and the timing of reproduction in one of the three study years, in line with the idea that effects of environmental predictability depend on mean environmental conditions. While adults were able to compensate the treatment effects, yearlings and juvenile females were not able to compensate negative effects of less predictable precipitation on growth and body condition, respectively. Treatment differences among age-classes cannot be explained by inter-age-class competition, but rather reflect differences among age-classes in the sensitivity to environmental predictability. This indicates that integrating differences in environmental sensitivity, and changes in averages and the predictability of climatic variables will be key for understanding if species may cope with the current climatic change.