Meeting Abstract
Movement is an important determinant of an animal’s fitness because it underlies all tasks necessary to survival, yet the basis on which animals choose varying speeds is still largely unknown. Speeds chosen by animals while preforming tasks, like predator evasion and foraging, are dependent on numerous external and internal factors. Environmental conditions and functional constraints should have influence over movement speeds of animals. Understanding the relationships between these factors and how they contribute to movement would help us better predict the speeds used during survival-dependent tasks. We video recorded Prairie Lizards (Sceloporus consobrinus) in experimental enclosures and analyzed the speeds and attack initiation distances lizards used while foraging. We predicted that, in more cluttered habitats, animals would use slower speeds and initiate prey capture attempts from shorter distances due to reduced visibility. Secondly, we predicted that average attack velocities during successful foraging attempts would be slower than unsuccessful attempts. Further, we predicted that increasing habitat complexity would reduce the difference of speeds between successful and unsuccessful attempts. Overall, attack speeds and distance were dependent on habitat type. Regardless of enclosure type, attack velocity was positively and significantly correlated with the attack distance, indicating that animals modulate attack speed based on distance prey is from them. Successful foraging attempts were significantly slower than unsuccessful ones, and the difference in successful and unsuccessful attempts was dependent on habitat configuration. Finally, this study emphasizes that functional constraints dominate in simple environments and that environmental constraints become more important with increasing habitat complexity.
