The impact of climate change is considered to be particularly important in arid environments where ectotherm species constitute the majority of vertebrates. Surprisingly, most studies dealing with the response of reptiles to climate change focus only on a few species. Here, we used a 30‐yr monitoring dataset to assess the consequences of climatic variations on a desert reptile community in eastern Australia. Community structure was measured in three habitat plots differing in flood regime using a range of metrics: the number of individuals and species, alpha biodiversity indices, species turnover, functional diversity, and an indicator describing the change in the critical maximum temperature of the community. Although the functional groups of species sharing similar traits were not clustered by habitat plots, diversity indices were highly plot‐specific. Community composition significantly shifted over time toward higher abundance of individuals for species tolerant to heat in two plots, whereas we found an opposite trend in the third plot. Importantly, the response patterns of the different diversity indices to climatic parameters were not uniform. Yet, water‐related parameters were overall more influential than temperature. A decrease in water availability paired with rising temperatures may have strongly negative impacts. We stress that combining different diversity metrics is critical to better grasp the complexity of community responses to climate change and that predicting future changes in reptile communities of deserts needs to account for the complementarity of different sources of water supply such as those resulting from the dynamics of local rainfalls with flood regime.

中文翻译：

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水资源是沙漠爬行动物群落中分类和功能多样性的主要气候驱动因素

人们认为，气候变化的影响在以等温物种占大多数脊椎动物的干旱环境中尤为重要。令人惊讶的是，大多数有关爬行动物对气候变化的反应的研究只集中在少数几个物种上。在这里，我们使用了30年的监测数据集来评估气候变化对澳大利亚东部沙漠爬行动物群落造成的后果。使用一系列指标在三个不同洪水状况的栖息地中测量了群落结构：个体和物种数量，α生物多样性指数，物种更新，功能多样性以及描述该群落临界最高温度变化的指标。尽管具有相似性状的物种功能组没有按栖息地进行聚类，多样性指数高度取决于地块。随着时间的推移，群落组成在较大范围内向着耐热性较高的物种大量转移，而在第三幅图中我们发现了相反的趋势。重要的是，不同多样性指数对气候参数的响应方式并不统一。但是，与水有关的参数总体上比温度更具影响力。可用水量的减少以及温度的升高可能会产生严重的负面影响。