Female common lizards (Lacerta vivipara) do not adjust their sex-biased investment in relation to the adult sex ratio.
Details
State: Public
Version: Final published version
Serval ID
serval:BIB_D0DBDD31C2E6
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Female common lizards (Lacerta vivipara) do not adjust their sex-biased investment in relation to the adult sex ratio.
Journal
Journal of Evolutionary Biology
ISSN
1010-061X (Print)
ISSN-L
1010-061X
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2005
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
18
Number
6
Pages
1455-1463
Language
english
Abstract
Sex allocation theory predicts that facultative maternal investment in the rare sex should be favoured by natural selection when breeders experience predictable variation in adult sex ratios (ASRs). We found significant spatial and predictable interannual changes in local ASRs within a natural population of the common lizard where the mean ASR is female-biased, thus validating the key assumptions of adaptive sex ratio models. We tested for facultative maternal investment in the rare sex during and after an experimental perturbation of the ASR by creating populations with female-biased or male-biased ASR. Mothers did not adjust their clutch sex ratio during or after the ASR perturbation, but produced sons with a higher body condition in male-biased populations. However, this differential sex allocation did not result in growth or survival differences in offspring. Our results thus contradict the predictions of adaptive models and challenge the idea that facultative investment in the rare sex might be a mechanism regulating the population sex ratio.
Keywords
Animals, Body Constitution/physiology, Body Weights and Measures, Clutch Size/physiology, Female, Lizards, Maternal Behavior/physiology, Models, Biological, Selection, Genetic, Sex Ratio, Tail/anatomy & histology
Pubmed
Web of science
Open Access
Yes
Create date
24/11/2010 16:24
Last modification date
20/08/2019 16:51