Although tropical forest birds are known to prey upon small lizards and frogs, no study has documented the attributes of vertebrate-eating birds or whether birds prey opportunistically on the different elements of the herpetofauna within tropical communities. This study is based on a 14-mo investigation on avian diet, supplemented with a 3-y census of frogs and a 1-y census of lizards in a humi...

Is the visual system specialized for this type of image stabilization? Experimental observations on many species have shown that smooth motion of a very large image over an animal’s visual field produces optokinetic response of the eye, head and body, where the gaze follows the moving stimulus for a while and then makes a fast resetting movement (saccade), and then another stimulus following mo...

Bite force can be an important aspect of a lizard’s organismal performance, and is likely to subject influence by ambient conditions including individual’s thermal environment. We examined the effects body temperature (T b ) on initial bite rock- crevice-dwelling individuals three species lizards: Abronia graminea (Anguidae), Barisia imbricata Xenosaurus fractus (Xenosauridae) from Mexico. In B...

Jeddaherdan aleadonta Apesteguía et al., 2016 is currently known as the first and single Mesozoic iguanian lizard from Africa. The original description age of holotype only specimen (i.e. a dentary fragment bearing five teeth) are revised here. We show that this fragmentary was misinterpreted anatomically, does not come Cretaceous beds but instead Quaternary in age, must be assigned to an indet...

Feeding specializations such as herbivory are an often cited example of convergent and adaptive evolution. However, some groups such as lizards appear constrained in the evolution of morphological specializations associated with specialized diets. Here we examine whether the inclusion of plant matter into the diet of omnivorous lacertid lizards has resulted in morphological specializations and ...

Interpopulational variation in sexual signals may lead to premating reproductive isolation and speciation. Genetic and morphological studies suggest that the Iberian wall lizard, Podarcis hispanica, forms part of a "species complex" with several cryptic species. We explored the role of chemical sexual signals in interpopulational recognition between five distinct populations of Iberian wall liz...

We consider two biological phenomena taking place at the air-water interface: the water lapping of felines and the water running of lizards. Although seemingly disparate motions, we show that they are intimately linked by their underlying hydrodynamics and belong to a broader class of processes called Froude mechanisms. We describe how both felines and lizards exploit inertia to defeat gravity,...

Flying lizards of the genus Draco are renowned for their gliding ability, using an aerofoil formed by winglike patagial membranes and supported by elongated thoracic ribs. It remains unknown, however, how these lizards manoeuvre during flight. Here, I present the results of a study on the aerial behaviour of Dussumier's Flying Lizard (Draco dussumieri) and show that Draco attaches the forelimbs...

Anolis lizards communicate with colorful dewlaps that often include detailed patterns. We measured the visual acuity of Anolis sagrei. Lizards viewed a checkerboard pattern of red and yellow-green squares that were too small to resolve, and thus appeared uniform in color. We quickly replaced the center portion of the display with a pattern of larger squares. If the new pattern could be resolved...

The predominant view is that the thermal physiology of tropical ectotherms, including lizards, is not labile over ecological timescales. We used the recent introduction (∼35 years ago) of the Puerto Rican lizard Anolis cristatellus to Miami, Florida, to test this thermal rigidity hypothesis. We measured lower (critical thermal minimum [CT(min)]) and upper (critical thermal maximum [CT(max)]) th...