Unveiling a spatial tail breakage outbreak in a lizard population.
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Data
2017
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Resumo
Many ecological attributes of organisms vary spatially. This strict dependency upon space generally arises by
individuals occupying places with the necessary resources and conditions for survival. For lizards, losing the tail is an evolved
mechanism that allows them to escape predators or to avoid aggressive intraspecific agonistic interactions. We evaluated the
spatial relation of tail loss in a population of the lizard Tropidurus montanus. Our results support the occurrence of a spatial
cluster of autotomized lizards. However, we cannot relate the cluster formation to the crowding of neighbouring lizards nor
to individuals’ body size. Tail loss in lizards is known to be related to predatory attacks or intraspecific aggression, and we
now show that tail autotomy occurs in a non-random way regarding space, and thus is also related to the space occupied by
individuals in populations.
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Autotomy, Space scan, Spatial cluster, Tropidurid
Citação
GALDINO, C.; VENTURA, S.; MOREIRA, G. J. P. Unveiling a spatial tail breakage outbreak in a lizard population. Amphibia-Reptilia, v. 38, p. 238-242, 2017. Disponível em: <https://brill.com/view/journals/amre/38/2/article-p238_12.xml>. Acesso em: 16 jan. 2018.