The Ecology of Lizard Reproductive Output
Global Ecology and Biogeography, (Global Ecol. Biogeogr.) (2011) ••, ••–•• RESEARCH The ecology of lizard reproductive PAPER outputgeb_700 1..11 Shai Meiri1*, James H. Brown2 and Richard M. Sibly3 1Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, ABSTRACT 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel, 2Department of Biology, Aim We provide a new quantitative analysis of lizard reproductive ecology. Com- University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA and Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde parative studies of lizard reproduction to date have usually considered life-history Park Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA, 3School components separately. Instead, we examine the rate of production (productivity of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, hereafter) calculated as the total mass of offspring produced in a year. We test ReadingRG6 6AS, UK whether productivity is influenced by proxies of adult mortality rates such as insularity and fossorial habits, by measures of temperature such as environmental and body temperatures, mode of reproduction and activity times, and by environ- mental productivity and diet. We further examine whether low productivity is linked to high extinction risk. Location World-wide. Methods We assembled a database containing 551 lizard species, their phyloge- netic relationships and multiple life history and ecological variables from the lit- erature. We use phylogenetically informed statistical models to estimate the factors related to lizard productivity. Results Some, but not all, predictions of metabolic and life-history theories are supported. When analysed separately, clutch size, relative clutch mass and brood frequency are poorly correlated with body mass, but their product – productivity – is well correlated with mass. The allometry of productivity scales similarly to metabolic rate, suggesting that a constant fraction of assimilated energy is allocated to production irrespective of body size.
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