The effects of tail loss on survival, growth, reproduction, and sex ratio of offspring in the lizard Uta stansburiana in the field

Abstract 

Tail autotomy is a defense against predators used by many lizard species but is associated with various costs, most of which have been measured only in the laboratory. We conducted a field experiment in which we induced tail autotomy to approximately half (58%) of a marked sample (n=326) of Uta stansburiana from western Texas in the fall, and left the other half with intact tails. The following spring we determined survival, measured growth, and brought females to the laboratory to allow them to oviposit their eggs, which we incubated until hatching. Based on past studies, we anticipated inferior survival, growth, and reproduction following tail autotomy. We also predicted that females with tail loss would be energetically compromised and would alter the sex ratio of their offspring toward more daughters (as predicted by the Trivers-Willard hypothesis). Tailless lizards experienced significantly reduced survivorship, but those that survived grew the same as their tailed counterparts. Tailed and tailless females produced clutches equivalent in number of eggs and total mass. Whereas tailed females showed a significant positive relationship between average egg mass and snout-vent length, tailless females did not. Contrary to our expectations, tailless females produced heavier hatchlings than tailed ones, and sex ratios of hatchlings were equivalent for tailed and tailless females. In this population, tail loss in subadults leads to an increased risk of death, but apparently does not impose an energetic handicap such that later growth and reproduction suffer. We suggest that because tailless females are faced with decreased reproductive value, they respond by growing as much and laying as many eggs of the same mass as tailed females, despite the fact that they are also regenerating the tail. In addition, they somehow produce larger hatchlings than tailed females. Nevertheless, tailless females probably end up with lower overall lifetime fitness than tailed females, and tail loss thus induces the conditional reproductive strategy ”make the best of a bad situation”. Because tailless females produce larger, not smaller, hatchlings, they do not produce more daughters as predicted; i.e., we found no evidence for the Trivers-Willard effect following tail autotomy.