Article Review: Sexual Selection in Anolis sagrei

This article that I read wanted to have a deeper understanding of how sexual selection worked in lizards, particularly in brown anoles (Anolis sagrei).  The authors went into detail on the different aspects of sexual selection, both intersexual and intrasexual, and how not a lot is known about the contributing factors to why anole females choose the males that they do.  They thought that it could be due to male size, the male's territory, and also timing of when the mating occurred with the males. 

Using specimens found around the University of Florida, they captured and marked females and males in the area and collected genetic information from tissue sampling in their tails.  They measured the males every month for two months to see how they were growing.  The anoles were marked with unique beads that gave each anole its own identity.  The females ended up laying their eggs in May, as so estimated by previous data in 2014.  Thirty-six females were captured from the wild and kept in captivity until mid-November.  After 2-10 days of the eggs hatching, the embryos were dissected for the researchers to do genetic testing to see the paternity of the eggs.

Through all of their testing and results, they found that males and females were both found to have mated with multiple mates rather than the females just mating with the males that were in close proximity to their territory.  Most of the females had multiple paternity eggs.  The males with the most eggs at the end of the day were the larger than their competitors, suggesting that size and sexual selection are positively correlated.  With all this being said, this gives us insight to how important space and territories are for these anoles.  Due to the anoles moving from territory to territory in hopes to find the largest mate, it is very important to keep habitats connected and not have fragmented habitats.  It also goes to show that science and our knowledge of it is constantly changing and accepted ways of thinking and concepts can always be changed and/or have exception cases such as this one.  With females moving to different males' territories looking for mates, more research should go into the genetic diversity and genetic dispersal of these anoles and also to see if this is the same case for other lizards and taxa as well!

The authors are Ambika Kamath and Jonathan B. Losos.  They published their findings through the Proceedings of the Royal Society.  The URL for this article is as follows:  https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2017.2244