Behavioral Ecology Advance Access originally published online on January 19, 2005
Behavioral Ecology 2005 16(3):514-520; doi:10.1093/beheco/ari019
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Behavioral Ecology © International Society for Behavioral Ecology; all rights reserved.
Behavioral syndromes influence mating systems: floater pairs of a lizard have heavier offspring
School of Botany and Zoology, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Address correspondence to J. Stapley, who is now at Department of Animals, Plants and Environmental Sciences, University of Witswatersrand, Johannesberg 2050, South Africa. E-mail: stapley{at}biology.biol.wits.ac.za.
Variation in correlated behaviors or behavioral syndromes could have interesting effects on mating systems, especially if the variation in syndrome exists in both sexes. Both males and females of the lizard Eulamprus heatwolei display two behavioral types of a behavioral syndrome, defined by correlations between territorial, exploratory, and predator avoidance behaviors. We tested how this variation in behavioral syndrome influences reproductive success, pairing patterns, and offspring weight. We used spatial behavior and residency in the field to identify territorial and floater individuals. Females were relocated to the laboratory to give birth, and all offspring, dams, and potential sires were genotyped to determine offspring paternity. During field surveys, 164 lizards were caught of which 27.5% were territorial and the rest were floaters. Paternity was assigned to 66% of the 104 offspring produced by 33 dams. Territorial sires fathered a greater proportion of the offspring of territorial dams than floater sires. Larger territorial males were more likely to sire the entire clutch or share paternity with fewer additional sires than smaller territorial males. Floater sire size, however, did not influence the number of fathers per litter. Floater females produced heavier offspring than their territorial counterparts, and offspring fathered by floaters were heavier than maternal half-sibs fathered by territorial males. We speculate that differences in offspring weight may be the result of differences in yolk provisioning by females and parent genetic compatibility.
Key words: Eulamprus heatwolei, multiple paternity, offspring quality, personalities.
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  D. M. Logue, S. Mishra, D. McCaffrey, D. Ball, and W. H. Cade A behavioral syndrome linking courtship behavior toward males and females predicts reproductive success from a single mating in the hissing cockroach, Gromphadorhina portentosa Behav. Ecol., May 6, 2009; (2009) arp061v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
T. Brodin Behavioral syndrome over the boundaries of life--carryovers from larvae to adult damselfly Behav. Ecol., January 1, 2009; 20(1): 30 - 37. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 N. A Dochtermann and S. H Jenkins Behavioural syndromes in Merriam's kangaroo rats (Dipodomys merriami): a test of competing hypotheses Proc R Soc B, September 22, 2007; 274(1623): 2343 - 2349. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
A. M Bell Future directions in behavioural syndromes research Proc R Soc B, March 22, 2007; 274(1611): 755 - 761. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|