Displays are ubiquitous throughout the animal kingdom. While many have been thoroughly documented, the factors affecting the expression of such displays are still not fully understood. We tested the hypotheses that display production would be affected by ecological context (i.e. the identity of the receiver) and intrinsic qualities of the signaler (i.e. heavyweight and lightweight size class) in the green anole lizard, Anolis carolinensis. Our results supported these predictions and show that a) ecological context, specifically displaying to conspecifics, has the greatest impact on display production; b) size class influenced display rate with heavyweight males displaying more to green females and lightweight males displaying more to green males in similar frequency between the two size classes to their respective target stimuli. Furthermore, our results provide empirical support for differential use of the three major display types (A, B and C displays), and uncover unexpected complexity in green anole display production.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uno.edu/oai:scholarworks.uno.edu:td-2786 |
| Date | 20 December 2013 |
| Creators | Policastro, Catherine |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UNO |
| Source Sets | University of New Orleans |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations |
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