Journal article
Color change for thermoregulation versus camouflage in free-ranging lizards
KR Smith, V Cadena, JA Endler, MR Kearney, WP Porter, D Stuart-Fox
American Naturalist | UNIV CHICAGO PRESS | Published : 2016
DOI: 10.1086/688765
Abstract
Animal coloration has multiple functions including thermoregulation,camouflage,and social signaling,and the requirements of each function may sometimes conflict. Many terrestrial ectotherms accommodate the multiple functions of color through color change. However,the relative importance of these functions and how color-changing species accommodate them when they do conflict are poorly understood because we lack data on color change in the wild. Here,we show that the color of individual radio-tracked bearded dragon lizards,Pogona vitticeps,correlates strongly with background color and less strongly,but significantly,with temperature. We found no evidence that individuals simultaneously optimi..
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Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank M. Rubanow, G. Troup, and M. Velik-Lord for field assistance; A. Dickerson for assistance with laboratory experiments; and A. Moussalli for critical comments. A. M. Allen and A. Y. Fong kindly provided the ventilator. This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (DP120100105) to D.S.-F., J.A.E., and W.P.P. Author contributions: D.S.-F., J.A.E., and W.P.P. conceived and funded the project. K.R.S. collected and analyzed the field data and cowrote the manuscript. D.S.-F. wrote the manuscript and analyzed the laboratory data. V.C. contributed to study design and field data collection and performed the laboratory experiments and surgical procedures. J.A.E. contributed to data analysis, interpretation, and writing. M.R.K. and W.P.P. contributed to project conception and data interpretation. All authors edited the manuscript.