Colorful displays signal male quality in a tropical anole lizard

Abstract

Parasites influence colorful ornaments and their behavioral display in many animal hosts. Because coloration and display behavior are often critical components of communication, variation in these traits may have important implications for individual fitness, yet it remains unclear whether such traits are signals of quality in many taxa. We investigated the association between ectoparasitic mite load and the color and behavioral use of the throat fan (dewlap) by male Anolis brevirostris lizards. We found that heavily parasitized lizards exhibited lower body condition, duller dewlaps, and less frequent dewlap displays than less parasitized individuals. Our results thus suggest that highly parasitized individuals invest less in both ornamental color and behavioral display of that color. Because the two components of the signal simultaneously provide information on male quality, this study provides novel support for the long-standing hypothesis that colorful traits may function as social or sexual signals in reptiles.

Trait allometries generate super‐honesty in Anolis dewlaps and may underlie sexual dimorphism

“…Red colors in the dewlap are almost exclusively the product of pterin (particularly drosopterin) pigments that, unlike carotenoid pigments, are not obtained from dietary sources (Macedonia et al 2000;Steffen & McGraw 2009;Steffen et al 2010). A. aquaticus dewlap color variation is, therefore, unlikely to be the result of dietary quality differences among individuals and may, instead, be determined by genetics (Ng et al 2013), hormonal changes (Cox et al 2015) and/or the health status of individuals (Cook et al 2013).…”

“…In most anoles, dewlap size is an honest indicator of bite force (Vanhooydonck et al 2005a,b). Dewlap color may correlate with condition, testosterone, immunity and contest success (Cook et al 2013;Steffen & Guyer 2014;Cox et al 2015;Driessens et al 2015) and is a target of female choice (Sigmund, 1983;Cook et al 2013). Consequently, the dewlap fulfills many of the criteria of a reliable indicator of individual quality ( Vanhooydonck et al 2007).…”

Clothing color mediates lizard responses to humans in a tropical forest

“…They also have distinctive sexual coloration: the sexually selected signaling color of the dewlap is orange to the human eye (Figure ). Anoline dewlaps can be used as an honest indicator of health (Cook, Murphy, & Johnson, ; Driessens, Huyghe, Vanhooydonck, & Damme, ), can convey bite force (Baeckens, Driessens, Huyghe, Vanhooydonck, & Damme, ; Henningsen & Irschick, ), and are used for intra‐ and inter‐sexual interactions (Steffen & Guyer, ). In water anoles, specifically, dewlap size scales with traits implicated in intrasexual combat and is likely used as an honest signal of fighting ability (Petelo & Swierk, ; Putman, Azure, & Swierk, ).…”

Morphological divergence and reduced ectoparasite prevalence in an introduced population of a Caribbean anole

“…However, body condition indices can only detect major differences in energy reserves between infested and non-infested individuals (Peig & Green, 2009). Parasites have been shown to affect reptiles in less obvious ways such as reducing the quality of sexual displays (Cook, Murphy & Johnson, 2013), negatively impacting movement and home-range size (Main & Bull, 2000), and enhancing immunocompetence (Spence et al, 2017) which all affect the success of invading individuals or populations in complex ways. More detailed measures of host fitness are needed to assess whether the reduced parasite prevalence has benefited A. maynardi in its introduced range.…”