Predatory Behavior in Lizards

Bels, Vincent; Pallandre, Jean-Pierre; Charlier, Sébastien; Maillard, A.; Legreneur, Pierre; Russell, Anthony P.; Paindavoine, Anne-Sophie; Zghikh, Leïla-Nastasia; Paulet, Emeline; Gysel, Emilie Van; Remy, Christophe; Montuelle, Stéphane J.

doi:10.1201/9781498782739-5

Cited by 7 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…The diversity of tongue morphology of lizards has been extensively documented, mostly in relation to the structure of its dorsal epithelium and lingual musculature. Lizards are known to employ the tongue in a variety of behaviours, including chemosensory detection, drinking, food procurement and/or capture, food transport, swallowing, and grooming (Russell & Rosenberg, ; Bels, Chardon & Kardong, ; Schwenk & Rubega, ; Bels et al , ; Baeckens, Van Damme & Cooper Jr, b; Bels et al , ,b). Several authors offer functional explanations for the morphological diversity seen in the tongue epithelia of lizards (Meyers & Nishikawa, ; Herrel et al , ; Meyers & Herrel, ; Abbate et al , , , ; Zghikh et al , ; Iwasaki, Erdogan, & Asami, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among iguanian lizards (currently assigned to the Toxicofera), the tongue is directly involved in prey capture (Schwenk & Throckmorton, ; Bels, ; Kraklau, ; Bels et al, ; Herrel et al , ; Meyers & Herrel, ; Schaerlaeken, Meyers & Herrel, ; Brau et al , ; Bels et al , ,b), but also plays an important role in drinking (Bels et al, ; Wagemans et al , ). The agamid Pogona exemplifies the differences in tongue protraction and deformation when employed in prey capture and drinking (Bels et al , ,b). In scleroglossan ( sensu lato ) lizards, the tongue plays a key role in collecting chemical signals (Baeckens et al , ) and assists in prey capture in only two families, the Scincidae and Cordylidae (Urbani & Bels, ; Smith, Kardong & Bels, ; Reilly & McBrayer, ; Montuelle et al , ; Broeckhoven & Mouton, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mechanics and kinematics of fluid uptake and intraoral transport in the leopard gecko

et al. 2020

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Drinking permits amniote vertebrates to compensate for water loss. Lizards (nonophidian squamates) use their tongue to imbibe water, but for most lizards the tongue is also employed in other activities. To determine how these various demands can be accommodated alongside the tongue's role in drinking, it is necessary to firstly determine the tongue's function in water uptake and intraoral transport in a lizard that does not use this organ for chemoreception or food prehension. We selected the leopard gecko (Eublepharis macularius) for this purpose. We build upon previous morphological observations of the anatomy of its tongue and oral cavity and explore its drinking behaviour through high-speed cinematography and cineradiography. This allows us to follow the movement of radio-opaquely labelled water in association with tongue, jaw and throat movements. The tongue is modified to collect water and to release it into the anterior region of the buccal cavity. Repeated tongue cycles are associated with the shifting of the imbibed water into paired ventrolateral chambers and ultimately to its passage to a single, midline posterior chamber prior to swallowing. Tongue movements, capillarity and pressure changes due to hyolingual movements cause water to be moved posteriorly along specific pathways prior to swallowing, bypassing the airways and dorsal surface of the mid-and hind tongue. In this licking-based lingually driven approach to drinking, only small volumes of water can be gathered at a time, with a drinking bout consisting of 20-30 tongue cycles before emersion and swallowing occur. This mechanism differs from drinking in turtles and snakes, which do not employ licking and may take in larger quantities of water. We advance the hypothesis that all lizards have conserved this pattern of tongue-based water uptake and precisely directed intraoral fluid transport, with specializations for tongue-based food capture and/or lingually based chemoreception being superimposed thereupon.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mechanics and kinematics of fluid uptake and intraoral transport in the leopard gecko

et al. 2020

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“…Predation events can generally be divided into five main phases: encounter, detection, pursuit, subjugation and consumption [Endler, 1986;cited in Downes and Shine (2001)], with prey capture referring specifically to events that take place during pursuit and subjugation. Lizards have become a model system for prey capture studies (reviewed in Schwenk, 2000;Bels et al, 2019;Montuelle and Kane, 2019), with most studies focusing on how the prey is captured with the jaws or tongue. Measurements within these studies focus on the cranial movements of the skull (Montuelle et al, 2012), but post-cranial movements have received far less attention, despite the clear dependence on locomotor systems in capturing elusive prey (Bels et al, 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

Editorial: Prey-predator interactions

Rind,

Bels

2024

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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“…One common interaction is aggressive behavior, defined as a negative behavior directed toward another individual that imposes a cost to that individual (Whiting and Miles, 2019). Intraspecific aggression is one of the most widely studied animal behaviors, with data from the study of lizards being among the most important in shaping thought on the proximate causes and ultimate consequences of aggression (Bels and Russell, 2019). The seminal studies on lizard aggression were conducted on adult males of species within the Iguania lineage, probably because of the conspicuous visual displays that these lizards use to communicate with potential rivals (Johnson et al, 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

Lack of Aggressive Behavior between Neonates of Little Brown Skinks (Scincella lateralis)

Paulissen

Fletcher

2023

Journal of Herpetology

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Nearly all studies of lizard behavior have been conducted on adults. Therefore, an important part of the lizard life cycle has been overlooked, the neonate stage. Lizards hatch at about the same time, briefly causing high density and increased chances that neonates engage in aggressive encounters. We studied the behavior of neonate Little Brown Skinks (Scincella lateralis) by staging a series of dyadic encounters between pairs of neonates in the laboratory. Two neonates were confined in an observation chamber on either side of a partition for 48 h. The partition was then removed, a single retreat was placed in the center of the observation chamber, and the behavior of the two neonates was recorded for 60 min. Neonate Little Brown Skinks almost never showed aggressive behaviors, such as biting and chasing, exhibited by adults. Neonates segregated themselves on opposite sides of the observation chamber when active on the surface, but frequently simultaneously occupied the retreat, something that almost never happens in adults. Limited data on species of skinks that form stable aggregations suggest that retreat sharing by neonates or juveniles may be common in members of the Scincidae.

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Predatory Behavior in Lizards

Cited by 7 publications

References 1 publication

Mechanics and kinematics of fluid uptake and intraoral transport in the leopard gecko

Mechanics and kinematics of fluid uptake and intraoral transport in the leopard gecko

Editorial: Prey-predator interactions

Lack of Aggressive Behavior between Neonates of Little Brown Skinks (Scincella lateralis)

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