About the article by S. S. Liberman and N. V. Pokrovskaya on the thermal biology of Lacerta agilis (1943)

More than seventy years ago in 1943 Zoological Journal (Moscow) published the article “Materials on the ecology of Lacerta agilis”, by S. S. Liberman and N. V. Pokrovskaya that was prepared under the supervision of A.M.Sergeev. This article can be rightly considered as the first basic work in the field of reptile’s thermal biology, as it was published one year earlier than the well-known paper by R. B. Cowles and Ch. M. Bogert (Cowles, Bogert, 1944), which now is considered to be the beginning of this direction of scientific research. But the scientific importance of this paper is not less than that of Cowles and Bogert. In the first part of this paper, the authors described temperature live conditions in Lacerta agilis and their thermal endurance, in the second part – the peculiarities of their breeding and development of eggs. Both parts are equally interesting and qualitative as well as methodically correct. The authors used the complex of terms and concepts, that later became basic in reptile’s thermal biology. They studied the complete daily course of body temperatures in these lizards, for the first time they paid attention to the fact, that during the period of full activity of lizards their body temperature is almost stable. In this article some very important innovations were proposed, in particular, measuring body temperature instead of that of the soil. Unfortunately, some of these innovations (the description of activity statuses, using the mode for definition of preferred temperatures, etc.). were not applied by other researchers. In this paper the brief biographic information about S. S. Liberman and A. M. Sergeev is given. The data about N. V. Pokrovskaya has not found