Meeting Abstract
The ecological requirement for performing multiple whole-organism performance tasks places conflicting demands on organismal morphology and physiology. These functional conflicts are the basis for trade-offs in performance expression. Intraspecific performance trade-offs may be masked at the population level, but can become apparent when measured at the level of the individual. We tested for individual level trade-offs among three performance traits (sprinting, endurance, and biting) in green anole lizards. Because relationships among performance abilities in sexually dimorphic species might be sex-specific, we also test whether these trade-offs differ between males and females. We found trade-offs between bite force and sprint speed in females, but among-individual correlations between traits in males showed less obvious patterns. We consider the implications of among- and within-individual variation, as well as the effects of variation among performance trials, for performance trade-offs.
