Fox Lab Behavioral and Evolutionary Ecology / Herpetology

Tail autotomy in lizards can aid in escape from predators, but it comes with associated costs. My lab and I previously showed that loss of tail in Uta stansburiana brought on a fall in social status in both males and females, and that restoring the tail regained social status in females but not males. Females used the tail as a status-signaling badge, but males did not. Likewise there is a sexual difference in the effect of tail loss in the sexes. Males maintain their sprint speed after tail autotomy and females run slower. We induced tail autotomy to half of our study subjects in their natural habitat in West Texas. Tailless females use the tail as a status badge, and make the best of a bad situation. They defend lower quality, suboptimal territories. This leads to less fighting, and tailless females maintain their original territory size and number of overlaps. Males do not have this option, and, as long as they retain their tails, must fight to defend large, diverse territories to attract females and protect them from intruding males. However, without the tail, males are at a disadvantage and lose more of these fights. These tailless males abandon territoriality and adopt a more cryptic, less assertive behavior, and assume an alternate reproductive tactic, that of sneaker.