Effects of rainfall and geography on the comparative diets of eight rainbow lizard populations across Togo, Benin and Nigeria (West Africa)

Abstract

bstract. The diet composition of rainbow lizards (Agama agama complex) populations was studied by feces analysis at eight distant places across a mega-transect in the Gulf of Guinea (West Africa), covering three countries: Togo, Benin and Nigeria. The effects of geography (= linear distance between study sites) and local conditions (using the mean annual rainfall as a proxy of the site-specific conditions) on dietary similarity of rainbow lizards were tested. Rainbow lizards were mainly insectivorous at all sites. Multivariate analyses identified four main groups of localities in terms of diet diversity indexes, with populations inhabiting forest towns tending to have less prey taxa richness than conspecifics from more arid areas, which instead had higher dietary evenness. Food niche overlap between populations was high among populations (range 0.631-0.940, X = 0.839), and decreased with increases in the difference of mean annual rainfall between sites. There was no effect of the geographic distance on the similarity in diet composition between populations. A UPGMA dendrogram revealed a geographic trend in terms of presence/absence of the various prey types in the diets, with all the Nigerian study sites forming one cluster, whereas Lomé and Cotonou, two cities situated within the Dahomey Gap, being grouped apart. Overall, rainfall of the various sites seems to be more important than geographic distance for determining the taxonomic diet composition similarity of these lizards.

Dietary resource partitioning among age-sex classes of Agama agama (Squamata: Agamidae) assessed by fecal pellet analysis

“…Mature males were not found near flowers, whereas females and young and juveniles were; these observations suggest that food resources are partitioned among the age-sex classes. Similar observations have been reported for Agama agama and other lizards before (e.g., Akani et al 2013). Angelici et al (1997) attributed the feeding differences in age classes of Lacerta bilineata to ontogenetic change; thus, with juvenile western green lizards mainly select orthopterans, spiders, and Rhynchota, and then switch to beetles and isopods on maturation.…”

“…In Nigeria, the lizard also feeds on plant material (Chapman and Chapman 1964). In a subcon tinental study of a wide West African transect, Akani et al (2013) concluded that Agama is mainly insectivorous. Harris (1964) reported that arthropods represented 100% of the food for the species.…”

Life in the suburbs: artificial heat source selection for nocturnal thermoregulation in a diurnally active tropical lizard

“…Harris, 1964;Cloudsley-Thompson, 1981) that has enabled some species to survive even in areas outside their native African range (Enge et al, 2004;Leache et al, 2009;Wagner et al, 2009). An example of this ecological plasticity is the rainbow lizard (Agama agama), an agamid that has adapted to life in suburban habitats throughout West Africa (Chapman and Chapman, 1964;Akani et al, 1999Akani et al, , 2011Leaché et al, 2017) and has been the focus of numerous studies across African regions (e.g. Yeboah, 1982;Anibaldi et al, 1998;Adeoye and Ogunbanwo, 2007) including the Niger Delta of Nigeria (e.g.…”

Relationship between External Morphology and Gonads in Rainbow Lizard (Agama agama) in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria

“…The West African rainbow lizard (Agama agama Linnaeus, 1758) has been recognized to have the geographic distribution that is wide and overlaps with human habitations [9] which can influence their diet and remove them from being only insectivorous reptiles based on the reports of other reptiles (Gecko). The report of Ofori et al [10] showed that rainbow lizards can feed on processed food which increases their adaptation to humans.…”