Saw this on a leading USA breeder's webpage

Q: Should I use a red light or heat rock? Our house gets chilly at night. Temps at night are almost 65 degrees.
– David A: Beardies should have a nighttime cooling down so do not use artificial heating at night. It’s good for dragons to be at 65 degrees at night. In the desert, nighttime temps are always chilly.

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Sorry guys but while this is true in the high altitude rain shadow deserts of north America , it is not true of the natural range of central bearded dragons ( dry savannah grasslands, woodlands and bull dust country, very little actual sandy desert in Australia ) where the altitude is very low (in some areas lower than sea level and the area is dry simply because of the distance from the sea and lack of forests.

Is rarely frosty , even in winter in tropical and subtropical central Australia , especially not during the breeding season.

Only beardies who will experience frosty conditions are eastern beardies and those who are found in the southern states of Australia. Even then they will seek out shelter from the cold in hollows, crevaces between large sun warmed boulders, under thick leaf litter etc.

How cold does their natural range tend to get overnight? I like to allow a cooldown overnight but keep the temps between about 70-73f with a thermostat.

Data extracted from the BoM .
Annual temperature mins in Central, Eastern and Rankins natural ranges (these include winter temperatures when most adult wild beardies will be in brumation, and only juveniles will be active.









Note the absence of frosty conditions even in winter in the natural range of bearded dragons.

and the natural range for reference


and for reference , here is a map of altitude

CooperDragon":wf3bbe23 said:

How cold does their natural range tend to get overnight? I like to allow a cooldown overnight but keep the temps between about 70-73f with a thermostat.

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I keep my home above 21oC , cf with your 70-73 (about 23oC).

It looks like large swaths of about 45-60f which is a bit cooler than we've been recommending as a minimum at 65. Far from frosty but looks like natural temps go lower than we think. I'm sure they have methods of burying or insulating themselves in some way on the coldest nights and there must be warmer pockets here and there. High 60s/low 70s overnight is probably pretty comfortable for them given that info.

The winter , spring , summer , and autumn charts here : http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/climate_averages/temperature/index.jsp?maptype=3&period=win show the temperature mins for each season.

Beardies will have little problem finding rabbit warrens (occupied and unoccupied) which will provide a warmer more or less constant temperature refuge undergrown, and there are lots of places where large bounders can be found which will warm up during the day and keep them warm overnight when tucked in crevaces and cracks in the rock, and beardies are perfectly capable of digging burrows (need not be very deep) to excape the colder nights, don't need to be far underground to be several degrees warmer.

You've the advantage over most of us location wise, but the maps used are misleading. An annual average is mostly meaningless and the seasonal lows don't support the claim. Not disagreeing, it's an interesting topic.

I usually use Alice Springs since at a common reference point I have found in my research. The seasonal maps are showing a range of winter (3-6C) and summer (18-21C).

Locally it's summer, right? I am looking at the forecast for Alice Springs (since it's a common reference point for P. vitticepts) and it's 18C now and a high of 38C that's a pretty dramatic swing. Soil temps in the summer are considerably warmer than night air temps (~30C), but would take me some looking for winter soil temps to compare. I do recal reading a paper where dragons overnighted in trees, I'll have to look that up again.

Microclimate (burrows etc) usage is the hinge point - and even that will have seasonal variation. Certainly an interesting thing to look into. It begs the question then of how often are burrows and such used and what is the actual temperature benefit?

If it's significant then we should wonder if husbandry practices are what they ought to be. Other reptiles that utilize burrows (monitors come to mind) a lot it's considered mandatory that they can engage in that behavior. Just leaving the cage warmer is not the same effect as giving the option of a burrow/underbrush.