Fox Lab Behavioral and Evolutionary Ecology / Herpetology

Jodie Wiggins, a doctoral student in the Fox Lab coadvised by Fox and Lovern, graduated in July, 2018, with a PhD. Jodie worked on the research of precocial sexual selection in the Collared Lizard, and produced an outstanding dissertation documenting that male hatdchlings with brighter Hatchling Orange Bars (HOB) postumously produced more offspring, those with greater HOB area had a greater posthumous chance of producing offspring at all, hatchling females significantly preferred to associate with male hatchlings with brighter HOB, and hatchling males with greater HOB area were more aggressive than their counterparts with less ornamentation. In short, all the elements of sexual selection, but in hatchlings, what we call Precocial Sexual Selection. Congratulations, Jodie!