Data for: Thermal specialization limits evolutionary responses to climate warming in lizards

Understanding how ectothermic animals perform under climate warming is key to predicting biodiversity responses to global change. We compiled empirical sprint speed data for 85 lizard species and fitted thermal performance curves (TPCs) using a mechanistic model capturing enzymatic and protein stability constraints. From fitted TPCs, we derived physiological traits related to the shape of the TPCs and tested whether body size, thermal environment, and phylogeny predict performance. Species adapted to warmer habitats exhibited higher optimum temperatures and maximal performance values, supporting the hotter-is-better hypothesis. But warm-adapted specialists had a narrower thermal breadth and a steeper performance decrease under the highest thermal challenges than cold-adapted species. These results suggest an evolutionary trade-off between specialists and generalists, shaped by the evolutionary history. Our findings exhibit how evolutionary processes can tune performance to present clima..., , # Data for: Thermal specialization limits evolutionary responses to climate warming in lizards Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.2280gb65z](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2280gb65z) ## Description of the data and file structure We compiled empirical sprint-speed measurements for 85 lizard species and fitted thermal performance curves using a mechanistic Sharpe–Schoolfield–type model that captures enzymatic kinetics and high-temperature inactivation. From each fitted curve, we extracted key thermal traits (e.g., Topt, maximal performance, thermal breadth) and evaluated their relationships with body size, thermal environment, and phylogeny using phylogenetic generalized least squares (PGLS). ### Files and variables In this dataset, all **NA values** and **blank cells** are treated as **missing data** and handled accordingly during analysis. **1.** \"data_lizards.csv\" **-** This dataset contains raw measurements of sprint speed across experimental temperatures for each lizard species, includ...,