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Tail autotomy affects bipedalism but not sprint performance in a cursorial Mediterranean lizard

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Abstract

Running is essential in all terrestrial animals mainly for finding food and mates and escaping from predators. Lizards employ running in all their everyday functions, among which defense stands out. Besides flight, tail autotomy is another very common antipredatory strategy within most lizard families. The impact of tail loss to sprint performance seems to be species dependent. In some lizard species, tail shedding reduces sprint speed, in other species, increases it, and, in a few species, speed is not affected at all. Here, we aimed to clarify the effect of tail autotomy on the sprint performance of a cursorial lizard with particular adaptations for running, such as bipedalism and spike-like protruding scales (fringes) on the toepads that allow high speed on sandy substrates. We hypothesized that individuals that performed bipedalism, and have more and larger fringes, would achieve higher sprint performance. We also anticipated that tail shedding would affect sprint speed (though we were not able to define in what way because of the unpredictable effects that tail loss has on different species). According to our results, individuals that ran bipedally were faster; limb length and fringe size had limited effects on sprint performance whereas tail autotomy affected quadrupedal running only in females. Nonetheless, tail loss significantly affected bipedalism: the ability for running on hindlimbs was completely lost in all adult individuals and in 72.3% of juveniles.

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Acknowledgements

For this study, we followed all international, national (Cyprus Law on the use of Animals in Scientific Experiments, 133(I)/2005), and institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals. We are grateful to Mrs. H. Mair for the linguistic editing of the text.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cyprus, University Campus, P.O. Box 20537, 1678, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Pantelis Savvides, Maria Stavrou & Spyros Sfenthourakis

  2. Section of Zoology and Marine Biology, Department of Biology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Panayiotis Pafilis

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  1. Pantelis Savvides
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  2. Maria Stavrou
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Correspondence to Pantelis Savvides.

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Savvides, P., Stavrou, M., Pafilis, P. et al. Tail autotomy affects bipedalism but not sprint performance in a cursorial Mediterranean lizard. Sci Nat 104, 3 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-016-1425-5

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