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Brains and Brawn: dominant lizards are better learners too!

by Fonti Kar | Sep 6, 2017 | Animal signals, Cognition, Communication, Water skink project

Note: this blog post is republished from Fonti’s web site Dominant individuals tend to have greater monopoly over food and mates and therefore have more offspring compared to subordinate individuals. Are these successes attributed to greater cognitive ability?...

Why do winners keep winning?

by Whiting | Jul 20, 2016 | Animal signals, Behaviour, Publications, Sexual selection, Water skink project

by Fonti Kar Animals often find themselves in direct competition with other individuals for resources and mates. Because fighting is costly, many species honestly signal their fighting ability to avoid injury (non-escalated fights). For example, in flat lizards...

Athletic lizards: Sex, hormones, and physical performance

by Noble | Jun 21, 2014 | Behaviour, Publications, Sexual selection, Water skink project

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...

Sex, boldness and learning in a lizard

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...

A lizard’s guide to mating: Alternative reproductive tactics give males an edge in finding the ladies

by Whiting | Nov 4, 2013 | Behaviour, Lab news, Science news, Sexual selection, Water skink project

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...
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