Thursday, April 25, 2019

Article Review: Ecological factors determine mating systems for White's Skinks


Title: “Resource distribution mediates social and mating behavior in a family living lizard”
Authors: Ben Halliwell, Tobias Uller, Erik Wapstra, and Geoffrey M. Whilea
Published in Behavioral Ecology in 2017



This study investigated the impact of resource distribution on mating systems using Liopholis whitii, or White’s Skink, an Australian lizard in the skink family. Researchers made two enclosures, one with aggregated nest sites and one with evenly dispersed nest sites. They observed that social and genetic polygyny was more common in the enclosure with aggregated nest sites as compared to the enclosure with dispersed nest sites. They also observed that male reproductive success was somewhat more varied in the aggregated nest site treatment, due to sexual selection (although it was unclear whether this was female choice or male-male competition).



The results of this experiment support the theory that mating systems are more a result of ecological constraints than they are innate. I learned in animal behavior class that where there are dispersed clumps of resources, monogamy is more likely to be the resultant mating system, and where resources occur in denser clumps there is more opportunity for polygyny or other mating systems. That was clearly demonstrated by this study. The authors noted, however, that female territoriality may have limited males in the aggregated treatment ability to associate with several females. This study also shows that in polygynous systems there is more variation in male reproductive success (where some males monopolize access to the majority of the females and other males have little to no reproductive success) but it would be interesting to see why that is the case here. It seemed like the researchers had trouble drawing any conclusions in this area, and some of their results were in contrast to observations of wild populations.

Resource distribution mediates social and mating behavior in a family living lizard

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your notes drawn from you Animal Behavior class! I had never considered that component before.

Allison Welch said...

Why are dispersed resources predicted to promote monogamy (and vice versa)?