Meeting Abstract
Many species of lizards can autotomize their tail in response to the threat of predation. Tail autotomy is often followed by the regeneration of the tail, a process that is thought to be costly, although the costs of autotomy to females are rarely examined. In this study, we tested whether female Anolis sagrei lizards with an autotomized tail experienced lower reproductive fitness than a control group. To this end, we captured 30 gravid female A. sagrei early during the summer 2013 breeding season. Following a weeklong acclimatization period in the lab, we removed ~68% of the tails of 15 females, and the tails of 15 control females remained unmanipulated. For the next six weeks, all 30 females were housed individually, with access to a male every five days. All eggs laid were massed within one day of parturition, and once a week, we measured the mass, snout-vent length, and tail length of each female. Our results showed no difference between autotomized and control groups in the number of viable eggs laid, the average mass of those eggs, and the average change in female body mass or snout-vent length over the experimental period. However, during this time autotomized lizards showed an average regenerated tail growth of 26mm, compared to the average tail growth of 4mm in the control group. These results suggest that in this species where tails autotomize so easily, tail regeneration may incur minimal costs.
