Marco Barquero’s hard work has paid off! For his PhD, Marco travelled far and wide in his quest to study signalling in Jacky Dragons. Chapter 1 has just been published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. Marco studied three populations for which we had genetic data (thanks to Mitzy Pepper and Scott Keogh at . . . → Read More: Jacky Dragons have labile displays and don’t discriminate among populations
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 Comments are closed  Animal signals, Behaviour, Visual ecology  animal signal, Jacky dragon, Lizard Lab, Marco Barquero, Richard Peters, signal evolution Part I By Martin Whiting This post is long-overdue! Here, we are reporting on two field trips to our new study site in Albury, in New South Wales, close to the border with Victoria. In December of last year, Martin, Dan and Geoff While (University of Tasmania) went on a field trip to establish . . . → Read More: Dispatches from the field: the social lizard landscape (Albury, New South Wales) By Dan Noble When it comes to animal athletics lizards have been model systems for exploring the relationships between ecology and physical performance. Our two recent papers, one in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society and the second in Behavioral Ecology add to the growing list of studies looking at functional performance in lizards. Eastern water . . . → Read More: Athletic lizards: Sex, hormones, and physical performance In the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa sociable weaver nests are a prominent feature in the landscape. These large nests typically occupy camelthorn trees and provide a refuge to a range of organisms, including Kalahari tree skinks (Trachylepis spilogaster). They also provide refuge for a predator of the skink: the African pygmy falcon, which . . . → Read More: Kalahari tree skinks associate with sociable weaver nests despite African pygmy falcons Followers of the Lizard Lab blog will have read previous reports about relatively rapid learning in lizards. In those studies we typically focused on males or avoided drawing comparisons between the sexes because either the sample size was limited or the focus of the study was different. In our latest paper we decided the . . . → Read More: Sex, boldness and learning in a lizard By Dan Noble Sexual selection – the differential reproductive success of individuals – is a powerful evolutionary force. Sexual selection can lead to evolution of both beautiful and bizarre phenotypes, such as peacock trains, deer antlers and the complex displays and bright colours of many lizards. Although we see these tell-tail signs of sexual . . . → Read More: A lizard’s guide to mating: Alternative reproductive tactics give males an edge in finding the ladies Lizard cognition has experienced something of a resurgence in the last few years. To get up to speed, take a look at a previous post summarising most of the recent published work. In a new paper published online in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Ben Clark, Dan Noble and Martin Whiting from the Lizard Lab . . . → Read More: Hatchling lizards show their smarts in the classroom Snakes have traditionally been viewed as the poor cousins of lizards where social behaviour is concerned. This is perhaps an artefact of generally being more cryptic and less tractable than lizards and therefore more difficult to study. Nevertheless, snakes are really just legless lizards and share the same chemosensory system (Jacobsen’s organ for vomerolfaction) . . . → Read More: Social cues mediate space use in a small Australian elapid snake One comment - (Comments are closed) Animal signals, Behaviour, Small-eyed snake, Social behaviour chemosensory cues, Cryptophis nigrescens, Jacobsen's organ, Mitch Scott, small-eyed snake, snake A major interest in our lab is social behaviour and why animals live in groups. Group formation has evolved numerous times independently in many different species. Understanding the proximate mechanisms and ultimate (evolutionary) factors driving group formation is a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Stephan Leu recently spent time in the Lizard Lab and . . . → Read More: Tadpoles need friends too! Comments are closed Behaviour, Frog, Lab news, Publications, Science news, Social behaviour green and golden bell frog, group formation, Litoria aurea, social attraction, social behaviour, Stephan Leu, tadpole Macquarie University is currently offering MQRES scholarships for prospective Australian or NZ PhD students who can commence by 15 December 2012. We know this is short notice, but the combination of a positive outcome in the latest funding round from the Australian Research Council and the availability of Macquarie-funded PhD scholarships for domestic . . . → Read More: PhD Scholarship opportunity to work on social intelligence in Egernia skinks Comments are closed Behaviour, Cognition, Cunningham skink project, Social intelligence Cunningham skink, Egernia, PhD scholarship, social intelligence |
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