Meeting Abstract
Flashy secondary sexual traits are uncommon in females of species with traditional sex roles. Such occurrences are often attributed to female inheritance of a phenotype that is adaptive in males, although some evidence suggests that females may also benefit from displaying colorful signals. We investigated maternal inheritance and fitness consequences of male-typical blue badges across three populations of eastern fence lizards, along with potential hormonal drivers of this trait. We measured size and saturation of badges of mothers and their offspring, and relationships between this trait and concentrations of testosterone (T) and baseline corticosterone (CORT). We also assessed potential costs related to honest signaling such as impaired immune function and growth in offspring. There was a positive relationship between saturation of badges of mothers and their female offspring, but not male offspring. The same sex-specific relationship was observed for plasma T levels, which were a strong positive predictor of badge saturation in adulthood for both sexes. CORT levels were negatively associated with badge size, indicating that physiological stress may hinder development of this trait. Maternal badge size was associated positively with offspring immune function. It appears that females inherit their degree of ornamentation from their mothers, but males may be able to develop high-saturated badges independent of maternal phenotype. Despite the positive relationship with T, typical costs of honest signaling and androgens were not detected, and progeny of more ornamented females may in fact be more competitive in certain contexts. Still, other costs of female ornamentation have been detected in this species (e.g. reduced clutch survival), which may contribute to variability among females for this trait.
