by Whiting | May 21, 2014 | Behaviour, Habitat use, Lab news, Lizard ecology, Publications
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...
by Whiting | Mar 25, 2014 | Behaviour, Cognition, Herpetology, Publications, Water skink project
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...
by Whiting | Oct 16, 2013 | Behaviour, Cognition, Lab news, Publications
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...
by Whiting | May 26, 2013 | Animal signals, Communication, Lab news, Publications, Sexual selection
Dave Hamilton, Martin Whiting and Sarah Pryke Recently, the Pryke Lab published its first paper on a reptile—the iconic Frillneck Lizard (Chlamydosaurus kingii). Both males and females have frills and until now, the consensus has always been that frills play a role in...
by Noble | May 13, 2013 | Publications
Our new paper on female polyandry in E. quoyii has just been published in Behavioral Ecology. In this paper we tested a series of predictions that assessed the roles of direct and indirect genetic fitness benefits females may receive by mating with many males. Direct...
by Whiting | Feb 14, 2013 | Behaviour, Frog, Lab news, Publications, Science news, Social behaviour
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...
