Journal article
Ornament size and colour as alternative strategies for effective communication in gliding lizards
DA Klomp, TJ Ord, I Das, A Diesmos, N Ahmad, D Stuart-Fox
Journal of Evolutionary Biology | WILEY | Published : 2016
DOI: 10.1111/jeb.12908
Abstract
Sexual ornamentation needs to be conspicuous to be effective in attracting potential mates and defending territories and indeed, a multitude of ways exists to achieve this. Two principal mechanisms for increasing conspicuousness are to increase the ornament's colour or brightness contrast against the background and to increase the size of the ornament. We assessed the relationship between the colour and size of the dewlap, a large extendible throat-fan, across a range of species of gliding lizards (Agamidae; genus Draco) from Malaysia and the Philippines. We found a negative relationship across species between colour contrast against the background and dewlap size in males, but not in female..
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Awarded by National Geographic Society
Funding Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Jim McGuire for advice on the Draco phylogeny, Lee Grismer for help in locating field sites for Malaysian Draco species, and Audrey Stewart and Elizabeth Cassidy, and other students from Malaysia and the Philippines for assistance in the field. We thank the Malaysian Economic Planning Unit, Sarawak State Planning Unit, Sarawak Forestry Department, Sarawak National Parks and Nature Reserves and the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources for facilitating research permits. This work was supported by E&ERC start-up funds and a UNSW SFRGP grant to TJO, a grant from the Niche Research Grant Scheme (NRGS/1087/2-13(01)) to ID and a grant from the National Geographic Society (8875-11) to DSF. DAK was supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award. This study was covered by the UNSW Animal Care and Ethics Committee protocol #11/33b and the University of Melbourne Animal Ethics Committee approval 1112003. The authors declare no conflict of interest.