Journal article
Temperature-induced colour change varies seasonally in bearded dragon lizards
V Cadena, K Rankin, KR Smith, JA Endler, D Stuart-Fox
Biological Journal of the Linnean Society | OXFORD UNIV PRESS | Published : 2018
Abstract
The benefits of colour change are expected to vary seasonally because of changes in reproductive activity, temperature and, potentially, predation risk; yet temporal variation in colour change has seldom been examined. We measured colour change in spring and autumn using captive individuals from two differently coloured populations of the central bearded dragon lizard, Pogona vitticeps. We predicted that colour change should be greater in spring than autumn because of the added requirements of reproductive and territorial activity. To elicit colour change in a standardized way, we placed lizards inside temperature-controlled chambers and measured colour at 15, 25, 35 and 40 °C, repeating exp..
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Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Adam Elliott for his help with lizard collection, to Stefania Milano and Ashton Dickerson for their assistance with data acquisition and to Christopher Gatto, Jacob Gardiner, Vivian Truong, Georgia Goodchild, Anna Lewis, Silvia Swan and Jess Rowland for their help with photographic processing and animal care. We also extend our thanks to three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on a previous version of the manuscript. This study was supported by an Australian Research Council grant (DP120100105) to D.S.-F. and J.A.E. V.C., J.A.E. and D.S.-F. contributed to the research conception and design; V.C. and K.R.S. performed the experiments; J.A.E. provided photographic analysis methods and Matlab scripts; V.C. and K.R. processed raw data and conducted statistical analysis; V.C., K.R. and D.S.-F. wrote the manuscript; all authors revised and edited the manuscript. The authors declare no competing or financial interests.