Intersexual chemo-sensation in a “visually-oriented” lizard, Anolis sagrei
While the conspicuous visual displays of anoles have been studied in great depth, the possibility that these lizards may also interact through chemical signalling has received hardly any consideration. In this study, we observed the behaviour of male brown anoles (Anolis sagrei) when introduced into...
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PeerJ Inc.
2016
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4824904/ |
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pubmed-48249042016-04-11 Intersexual chemo-sensation in a “visually-oriented” lizard, Anolis sagrei Baeckens, Simon Driessens, Tess Van Damme, Raoul Animal Behavior While the conspicuous visual displays of anoles have been studied in great depth, the possibility that these lizards may also interact through chemical signalling has received hardly any consideration. In this study, we observed the behaviour of male brown anoles (Anolis sagrei) when introduced into an environment previously inhabited by female conspecifics, and compared it to when they were introduced into an untreated environment. The males in our tests exhibited significantly more elaborate display behaviour (i.e., greater number of dewlap extensions and head-nods) and a significantly greater number of tongue extrusions while in the cage formerly occupied by females than when placed in the untreated, control cage. The absolute numbers of tongue extrusions, however, were relatively low in comparison to average tongue-flick rates of ‘true’ chemically-oriented lizards. Our results strongly suggest that the males were capable of detecting chemical cues left behind by the females. These observations provide the first evidence of intersexual chemo-sensation in an anole lizard. PeerJ Inc. 2016-03-29 /pmc/articles/PMC4824904/ /pubmed/27069809 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1874 Text en ©2016 Baeckens et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Baeckens, Simon Driessens, Tess Van Damme, Raoul |
| spellingShingle |
Baeckens, Simon Driessens, Tess Van Damme, Raoul Intersexual chemo-sensation in a “visually-oriented” lizard, Anolis sagrei |
| author_facet |
Baeckens, Simon Driessens, Tess Van Damme, Raoul |
| author_sort |
Baeckens, Simon |
| title |
Intersexual chemo-sensation in a “visually-oriented” lizard, Anolis sagrei |
| title_short |
Intersexual chemo-sensation in a “visually-oriented” lizard, Anolis sagrei |
| title_full |
Intersexual chemo-sensation in a “visually-oriented” lizard, Anolis sagrei |
| title_fullStr |
Intersexual chemo-sensation in a “visually-oriented” lizard, Anolis sagrei |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Intersexual chemo-sensation in a “visually-oriented” lizard, Anolis sagrei |
| title_sort |
intersexual chemo-sensation in a “visually-oriented” lizard, anolis sagrei |
| description |
While the conspicuous visual displays of anoles have been studied in great depth, the possibility that these lizards may also interact through chemical signalling has received hardly any consideration. In this study, we observed the behaviour of male brown anoles (Anolis sagrei) when introduced into an environment previously inhabited by female conspecifics, and compared it to when they were introduced into an untreated environment. The males in our tests exhibited significantly more elaborate display behaviour (i.e., greater number of dewlap extensions and head-nods) and a significantly greater number of tongue extrusions while in the cage formerly occupied by females than when placed in the untreated, control cage. The absolute numbers of tongue extrusions, however, were relatively low in comparison to average tongue-flick rates of ‘true’ chemically-oriented lizards. Our results strongly suggest that the males were capable of detecting chemical cues left behind by the females. These observations provide the first evidence of intersexual chemo-sensation in an anole lizard. |
| publisher |
PeerJ Inc. |
| publishDate |
2016 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4824904/ |
| _version_ |
1613563877433278464 |