Meeting Abstract
Sexual signals are often associated with costs that can impact fitness through survival, reproduction and fecundity. The brightly colored dewlap of anoles can be used as a sexual signal to attract mates. In general, females are attracted to males with the larger and more brightly colored dewlap. The expression of these dewlaps may be associated with costs in the form of ectoparasites, such as mites. However, there is little known about the costs associated with sexual signals and ectoparasites. We studied the relationship between mite intensity, habitat use, and expression of a sexual signal in the Panamanian slender anole (Anolis apletophallus). Specifically, we tested whether the larger sexual signal in males relative to females resulted in increased mite intensity. We found that males had significantly more mites than females, but this difference was not driven by physiological or ecological factors like body temperature or habitat use. Interestingly, the difference in total number of mites between the sexes was driven by the preponderance of mites on the dewlaps of males, with similar amounts of mites on other regions of the body for both sexes. Males had many more mites on their dewlap than females and dewlap mite intensity increased with dewlap size for males. Our study shows that expression of sexual signals in male slender anoles are associated with ectoparasite costs. More broadly, these results suggest that sex-specific costs imposed by ectoparasites could structure the evolution of sexual signals.
