Natural parasites in conjunction with behavioral and color traits explain male agonistic behaviors in a lizard  

作　　者：Rodrigo Megia-Palma Dhanashree Paranjpe Robert D.Cooper Pauline Blaimont Barry Sinervo 

机构地区：[1]Department of Biomedicine and Biotechnology,Parasitology Unit,Universidad de Alcala(UAH),E-28805,Alcala de Henares,Spain [2]CIBio,Centro de Investigagao em Biodiversidade e Recursos Geneticos,InBIO Laboratorio Associado,Campus de Vairao,Universidade do Porto,P-4485-661 Vairao,Portugal [3]BIOPOLIS Program in Genomics,Biodiversity and Land Planning,CIBIO,Campus de Vairao,P-4485-661 Vairao,Portugal [4]Rupa Rahul Bajaj Center for Environment and Art,Empress Botanical Gardens,Kavade Mala,Pune,India [5]Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,University of California,Los Angeles,CA 90095,USA [6]Department of Biology,University of Houston Downtown,1Main St.,Houston,TX 77002,USA [7]Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,University of California,Santa Cruz,CA 95064,USA

出　　处：《Current Zoology》2024年第1期59-69,共11页动物学报（英文版）

基　　金：American National Science Foundation and Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad provided financial support(EEBB-I-14-08326 to RM-P and EF-1241848 to BS);RM-P enjoys a postdoctoral contract(CEECIND/04084/2017)by ICETA-Instituto de Ciencias,Tecnologias e Agroambiente da Universidade do Porto and Fundacao da Ciencia e Tecnologia.Authors declare no conflict of interest.

摘　　要：Male competition conforms to a cost-benefit model,because while aggression may increase reproductive prospects,it can also increase the risk of injury.We hypothesize that an additional cost in aggressive males would be an increase in parasite load associated with a high energy investment into sexual competition.Some of these infections,in turn,may downmodulate the level of host aggression via energetic trade-offs.We staged dyadic male contests in the lab to investigate the relationships of multiple parasites with the agonistic behavior of lizard hosts,Sceloporus occidentalis.We also included both color and behavioral traits from opponents in the analyses because(1)color patches of lizards may serve as intraspecific signals used by conspecifics to assess the quality of opponents,and(2)contests between male lizards fit classical models of escalated aggression,where lizards increase aggression displays in response to an opponent's behavior.The results conform to our hypothesis because male lizards displayed more pushups when they had more ticks.Moreover,some parasites may modulate the levels of aggression because lizards infected by hematic coccidians performed fewer pushups.Interestingly,lizards also displayed fewer pushups when both the chroma and size of the opponent's blue patch were greater.The results thus also supported the role of the blue patch of s.occidentalis as a sexual armament,because it contributed to the deterrence of aggression from opponent lizards.We revealed that natural parasitic infections in lizard hosts can contribute to their agonistic behavior.We encourage future studies to account for parasites in behavioral testswithlizards.

关 键 词：Ixodes pacificus Lankesterella sexual selection social interactions TICKS 

分 类 号：Q95[生物学—动物学]