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Competition, predation and natural selection in island lizards

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Abstract

Arising from R. Calsbeek & R. M. Cox Nature 465, 613–616 (2010)10.1038/nature09020; Calsbeek and Cox reply

Discerning the relative influence of competition and predation as selective forces is an important goal of evolutionary ecology. Calsbeek and Cox1 argue that intraspecific competition outweighs predation as an agent of natural selection on island populations of the lizard Anolis sagrei. However, we identify several problems with the design and analysis of the Calsbeek and Cox1 study that we believe render its results uninterpretable.

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Figure 1: Confounding relationships among treatments and variables.

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    Jonathan B. Losos

  2. Society of Fellows, Harvard University, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    Robert M. Pringle

  3. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, 08544, New Jersey, USA

    Robert M. Pringle

Authors
  1. Jonathan B. Losos
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  2. Robert M. Pringle
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Contributions

J.B.L. and R.M.P. analysed data and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Jonathan B. Losos.

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Competing financial interests: declared none

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Losos, J., Pringle, R. Competition, predation and natural selection in island lizards. Nature 475, E1–E2 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10140

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