Tantalising tongues: male carpet pythons use chemoreception to differentiate among females
For animals sparsely distributed across a landscape, finding and identifying a receptive female during a short breeding period can be a challenge for males. Many snakes appear to rely on the production of sex-specific pheromones to synchronise the timing of reproductive behaviour. The rare Australia...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
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CSIRO Publishing
2011
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/13091 |
| _version_ | 1848748255781847040 |
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| author | Bryant, G. Bateman, Bill Fleming, P. |
| author_facet | Bryant, G. Bateman, Bill Fleming, P. |
| author_sort | Bryant, G. |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | For animals sparsely distributed across a landscape, finding and identifying a receptive female during a short breeding period can be a challenge for males. Many snakes appear to rely on the production of sex-specific pheromones to synchronise the timing of reproductive behaviour. The rare Australian south-west carpet python (Morelia spilota imbricata) displays non-aggressive mating aggregations of up to six males around a receptive female, suggesting that males are responding to some chemical signal that enables multiple males simultaneously to identify and locate the female. We investigated chemoreceptive response (tongue-flicking) of 10 male pythons under laboratory conditions to 12 (randomly ordered) treatments each presented for three minutes. Cutaneous chemicals (dissolved in hexane solvent) were collected on cotton buds from the skin of six female pythons and male responses to these were compared with six control treatments. Male pythons produced a greater number of tongue flicks during the first minute of each trial, with fewer in minutes 2 and 3. Male chemoreceptive response in the third minute varied significantly between treatments and was only maintained for trials presenting cutaneous chemicals collected from the three relatively largest female pythons. This experiment suggests that male carpet pythons can use chemoreception to obtain information about their social environment, identifying pheromone cues from large, potentially fecund females. This ability would be adaptive for male mate-selection behaviour and is likely to also reduce costs of searching behaviour. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T07:02:08Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-13091 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T07:02:08Z |
| publishDate | 2011 |
| publisher | CSIRO Publishing |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-130912018-03-29T09:06:08Z Tantalising tongues: male carpet pythons use chemoreception to differentiate among females Bryant, G. Bateman, Bill Fleming, P. tongue-flicking mate searching reproductive behaviour snakes For animals sparsely distributed across a landscape, finding and identifying a receptive female during a short breeding period can be a challenge for males. Many snakes appear to rely on the production of sex-specific pheromones to synchronise the timing of reproductive behaviour. The rare Australian south-west carpet python (Morelia spilota imbricata) displays non-aggressive mating aggregations of up to six males around a receptive female, suggesting that males are responding to some chemical signal that enables multiple males simultaneously to identify and locate the female. We investigated chemoreceptive response (tongue-flicking) of 10 male pythons under laboratory conditions to 12 (randomly ordered) treatments each presented for three minutes. Cutaneous chemicals (dissolved in hexane solvent) were collected on cotton buds from the skin of six female pythons and male responses to these were compared with six control treatments. Male pythons produced a greater number of tongue flicks during the first minute of each trial, with fewer in minutes 2 and 3. Male chemoreceptive response in the third minute varied significantly between treatments and was only maintained for trials presenting cutaneous chemicals collected from the three relatively largest female pythons. This experiment suggests that male carpet pythons can use chemoreception to obtain information about their social environment, identifying pheromone cues from large, potentially fecund females. This ability would be adaptive for male mate-selection behaviour and is likely to also reduce costs of searching behaviour. 2011 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/13091 10.1071/ZO11029 CSIRO Publishing restricted |
| spellingShingle | tongue-flicking mate searching reproductive behaviour snakes Bryant, G. Bateman, Bill Fleming, P. Tantalising tongues: male carpet pythons use chemoreception to differentiate among females |
| title | Tantalising tongues: male carpet pythons use chemoreception to differentiate among females |
| title_full | Tantalising tongues: male carpet pythons use chemoreception to differentiate among females |
| title_fullStr | Tantalising tongues: male carpet pythons use chemoreception to differentiate among females |
| title_full_unstemmed | Tantalising tongues: male carpet pythons use chemoreception to differentiate among females |
| title_short | Tantalising tongues: male carpet pythons use chemoreception to differentiate among females |
| title_sort | tantalising tongues: male carpet pythons use chemoreception to differentiate among females |
| topic | tongue-flicking mate searching reproductive behaviour snakes |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/13091 |