Search results for "LIZARD"
showing 10 items of 106 documents
Erosion of Lizard Diversity by Climate Change and Altered Thermal Niches
2010
It is predicted that climate change will cause species extinctions and distributional shifts in coming decades, but data to validate these predictions are relatively scarce. Here, we compare recent and historical surveys for 48 Mexican lizard species at 200 sites. Since 1975, 12% of local populations have gone extinct. We verified physiological models of extinction risk with observed local extinctions and extended projections worldwide. Since 1975, we estimate that 4% of local populations have gone extinct worldwide, but by 2080 local extinctions are projected to reach 39% worldwide, and species extinctions may reach 20%. Global extinction projections were validated with local extinctions o…
No evidence for differential sociosexual behavior and space use in the color morphs of the European common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis)
2020
Abstract Explaining the evolutionary origin and maintenance of color polymorphisms is a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Such polymorphisms are commonly thought to reflect the existence of alternative behavioral or life‐history strategies under negative frequency‐dependent selection. The European common wall lizard Podarcis muralis exhibits a striking ventral color polymorphism that has been intensely studied and is often assumed to reflect alternative reproductive strategies, similar to the iconic “rock–paper–scissors” system described in the North American lizard Uta stansburiana. However, available studies so far have ignored central aspects in the behavioral ecology of this spec…
Individual dispersal status influences space use of conspecific residents in the common lizard, Lacerta vivipara
2006
The effects of immigration on the behaviour of residents may have important implications for the local population characteristics. A manipulative laboratory experiment with yearlings of the common lizard (Lacerta vivipara) was performed to test whether the introduction of dispersing or philopatric individuals influences the short-term spacing behaviour of resident individuals. Staged encounters were carried out to induce interactions within dyads. The home cage of each responding individual was connected by a corridor to an unfamiliar “arrival cage” to measure the latency to leave their own home cage after each encounter. Our results showed that the time that pairs spent in close proximity …
The role of male coloration in the outcome of staged contests in the European common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis)
2016
Colour signals play a key role in regulating the intensity and outcome of animal contests. Males of the common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis) show conspicuous ventrolateral ultraviolet (UV)-blue and black patches. In addition, some populations express a striking ventral colour polymorphism (i.e., discrete orange, white and yellow morphs). In this study, we set out to evaluate the potential signalling function of these colour patches by staging pairwise combats between 60 size-matched adult lizards (20 per morph). Combats were held in a neutral arena, with each lizard facing rivals from the three morphs in a tournament with a balanced design. We then calculated a fighting ability ranking usi…
Summer time predation on the obligatory off-host stage of an invasive ectoparasite
2016
SUMMARYPredation can regulate populations and strongly affect invasion success of novel prey. The deer ked (Lipoptena cervi; Linnaeus 1758) is an invasive ectoparasite of cervids that spends a long period of its life cycle outside the host. Prior to this study, virtually nothing was known about natural summer time predation on the deer ked. We aimed to evaluate the magnitude of summer time predation onL. cervipupae in different habitats and to identify potential predators. We conducted a set of field experiments, where we exposedL. cervipupae to various ground-dwelling vertebrate and invertebrate predators. The loss of pupae was monitored for different predator guilds. Three habitats of the…
Expression of regulatory genes in the embryonic brain of a lizard and implications for understanding pallial organization and evolution
2017
The comparison of gene expression patterns in the embryonic brain of mouse and chicken is being essential for understanding pallial organization. However, the scarcity of gene expression data in reptiles, crucial for understanding evolution, makes it difficult to identify homologues of pallial divisions in different amniotes. We cloned and analyzed the expression of the genes Emx1, Lhx2, Lhx9, and Tbr1 in the embryonic telencephalon of the lacertid lizard Psammodromus algirus. The comparative expression patterns of these genes, critical for pallial development, are better understood when using a recently proposed six-part model of pallial divisions. The lizard medial pallium, expressing all…
Scientific Reports
2019
Anthropogenic climate change ranks among the major global-scale threats to modern biodiversity. Extinction risks are known to increase via the interactions between rapid climatic alterations and environmentally-sensitive species traits that fail to adapt to those changes. Accumulating evidence reveals the influence of ecophysiological, ecological and phenological factors as drivers underlying demographic collapses that lead to population extinctions. However, the extent to which life-history traits influence population responses to climate change remains largely unexplored. The emerging 'cul-de-sac hypothesis' predicts that reptilian viviparity ('live-bearing' reproduction), a 'key innovati…
Dinosaurs, chameleons, humans, and evo-devo path: linking Étienne Geoffroy's teratology, Waddington's homeorhesis, Alberch's logic of "monsters," and…
2017
23 pages; International audience; Since the rise of evo-devo (evolutionary developmental biology) in the 1980s, few authors have attempted to combine the increasing knowledge obtained from the study of model organisms and human medicine with data from comparative anatomy and evolutionary biology in order to investigate the links between development, pathology, and macroevolution. Fortunately, this situation is slowly changing, with a renewed interest in evolutionary developmental pathology (evo-devo-path) in the past decades, as evidenced by the idea to publish this special, and very timely, issue on "Developmental Evolution in Biomedical Research." As all of us have recently been involved,…
Exotic Meats: An Alternative Food Source
2019
International audience; Exotic meats were a protein source for human diet for many years. However, the massive capture caused the overexploitation and placed many reptiles and amphibious on the verge of extinction. Therefore, the captive rearing, the control during slaughtering and processing has been proposed as an alternative to the capture of wild animals. The present chapter shows the nutritional composition of this kind of meat, characterized by low levels of fat, high contents of protein, essential amino acids, fatty acids (especially long-chain n-3) and minerals indicating that their consumption may be beneficial for human health. However, very little data is available on the nutriti…
Afferent and efferent projections of the dorsal anterior thalamic nuclei in the lizard Podarcis hispanica (Sauria, Lacertidae).
2002
The aim of this study was to investigate the afferent and efferent connections of the anterior thalamic nuclei in the lizard Podarcis hispanica. To identify potential sources of sensory inputs and to determine the fine organization of the projections of these thalamic nuclei to the telencephalon, we injected the sensitive tracer biotinylated dextran amine (BDA) into different nuclei of the anterior dorsal thalamus. We also injected BDA into several telencephalic areas in order to corroborate the results of thalamic injections. Our results show that the anterior thalamic nuclei receive projections from multiple areas and nuclei distributed throughout most of the brain, from rhombencephalon t…