Linking locomotor performance to morphological shifts in urban lizards.

ABSTRACT: Urban habitats are drastically modified from their natural state, creating unique challenges and selection pressures for organisms that reside in them. We compared locomotor performance of Anolis lizards from urban and forest habitats on tracks differing in angle and substrate, and found that using artificial substrates came at a cost: lizards ran substantially slower and frequently lost traction on man-made surfaces compared to bark. We found that various morphological traits were positively correlated with sprint speed and that these same traits were significantly larger in urban compared to forest lizards. We found that urban lizards ran faster on both man-made and natural surfaces, suggesting similar mechanisms improve locomotor performance on both classes of substrate. Thus, lizards i

SUBMITTER: Winchell KM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6015852 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature