hatchling collared lizard-ESB1

Stanley Fox, Jennifer Grindstaff, Matthew Lovern, and Ronald Van Den Bussche, in the OSU Department of Zoology, received a $500,000 grant from The National Science Foundation to study development of sexual selection. In many animal species, males and females are different in appearance and behavior and these differences usually arise about the time of puberty, when hormone changes occur. However, it's possible these sexual differences could develop earlier in life as long as the advantages of the differences are expressed later, as adults, in gaining mates. This early, pre-reproductive expression of sexual differences (and the later advantages) has not been the subject of much study.