The Ecological Significance of Sexual Dimorphism in Size in the Lizard Anolis conspersus.

Abstract: Just over one hundred and thirty years ago Charles Darwin, in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), developed remarkably accurate conclusions about man's ancestry, based on a review of general comparative anatomy and psychology in which he regarded sexual selection as a necessary part of the evolutionary process. But the attention of biologists turned to the more general concept of natural selection, in which sexual selection plays a complex role that has been little understood. This volume significantly broadens the scope of modern evolutionary biology by looking at this important and long neglected concept of great importance. In this book, which is the first full discussion of sexual selection since 1871, leading biologists bring modern genetic theory and behavior observation to bear on the subject. The distinguished authors consider many aspects of sexual selection in many species, including man, within the context of contemporary evolutionary theory and research. The result is a remarkably original and well-rounded view of the whole concept that will be invaluable especially to students of evolution and human sexual behavior. The lucid authority of the contributors and the importance of the topic will interest all who share in man's perennial fascination with his own history. The book will be of central importance to a wide variety of professionals, including biologists, anthropologists, and geneticists. It will be an invaluable supplementary text for courses in vertebrate biology, theory of evolution, genetics, and physical anthropology. It is especially important with the emergence of alternative explanations of human development, under the rubric of creationism and doctrines of intelligent design.

Abstract: Natural history is replete with observations on feeding, yet only recently have investigators begun to treat feeding as a device whose performance­ as measured in net energy yield/feeding time or some other units assumed commensurate with fitness-may be maximized by natural selection (44, 1 13, 135, 156, 181) . The primary task of a theory of feeding strategies is to specify for a given animal that complex of behavior and morphology best suited to gather food energy in a particular environment. The task is one, therefore, of optimization, and like all optimization problems, it may be tri­ sected: 1. Choosing a currency: What is to be maximized or minimized? 2. Choosing the appropriate cost-benefit functions: What is the mathematical form of the set of expressions with the currency as the dependent variable? 3. Solving for the optimum: What computational technique best finds ex­ trema of the cost-benefit function? In this review, most of the following section is devoted to possible answers to the first problem. Then four key aspects of feeding strategies will be considered: (a) the optimal diet, (b) the optimal foraging space, (c) the optimal foraging period, and (d) the optimal foraging-group size. For each, possible cost-benefit formulations will be discussed and compared, and predictions derived from these will be matched with data from the literature on feeding. Because the third problem is an aspect of applied mathematics, it will be mostly ignored. Throughout, emphasis will be placed on strategic aspects of feeding rather than on what Holling (75) has called "tactics."

Abstract: Body size is manifestly one of the most important attributes of an organism from an ecological and evolutionary point of view. Size has a predominant influence on an animal's energetic requirements, its potential for resource exploitation, and its susceptibility to natural enemies. A large literature now exists on how physiological, life history, and population parameters scale with body dimensions (24, 131). The ecological literature on species interactions and the structure of animal communities also stresses the importance of body size. Differences in body size are a major means by which species avoid direct overlap in resource use (153), and size-selective predation can be a primary organizing force in some communities (20, 70). Size thus imposes important constraints on the manner in which an organism interacts with its environment and influences the strength, type, and symmetry of interactions with other species (152, 207). Paradoxically, ecologists have virtually ignored the implications of these observations for interactions among species that exhibit size-distributed populations. For instance, it has been often suggested that competing species

Abstract: The evolution of "niche breadth," or "niche width," was a more popular topic in the evolutionary ecological literature of the 1960s and 1970s than it has been recently (109, 118, 120, 134, 155, 156). This review summarizes current hypotheses on the evolution of specialization and generalization and suggests areas in which future research might be rewarding. The topic is so broad that every area of biology bears on it. We cannot hope to offer an exhaustive review of evidence and in particular have slighted much of the ecological literature to emphasize genetic and evolutionary perspectives. We limit our discussion almost entirely to animals. We adopt Hutchinson's (86) representation of a population's ecological niche as an n-dimensional hypervolume, the axes of which are environmental variables or resources. Along each of these, the population displays a wide or narrow tolerance or pattern of utilization, relative to other populations or species. Specialization and generalization must be defined with reference to particular axes (e.g. temperature, range of food particle sizes). Brown (9) suggests that niche breadth along different axes is positively correlated and that this explains positive correlations across species between local abundance and breadth of geographic range. Multidimensional specialization might be expected if species arise in localized regions that differ in several ecological respects from those occupied by parent species. Cody (20), however, suggested that the breadth of habitat is negatively correlated with diet breadth among certain bird species. In practice, quantitative measurement of niche breadth can be difficult (22,

Abstract: Sympatric native Anolis species with similar structural habitats but contrasting climatic habitats are closer in head and body size on species—rich than on depauperate islands. In two localities, sympatric Anolis species with differential occurrences in sun or shade sought lower, more shaded perches during midday, resulting in partly nonsynchronous utilization of the vegetation by the two species. The second observation may be related to the first in the following way: nonsynchronous spatial overlap could dictate relatively great resource overlap for species coinhabiting patchy or edge areas, requiring great differences between the species in prey size in addition to those in climatic habitat. The extent of such overlap on small depauperate islands could be greater if these contained a greater proportion of patchy or edge habitats (with respect to insolation), or if climatic preferences were broader and more overlapping than on large, species—rich islands. In each locality, the relatively more shade—inhab...

Abstract: The eight species of lizards of the genus Anolis in Puerto Rico can be divided into four morphological similarities. One, Anolis curvieri, is very different from the rest and has not been discussed here. The other seven species fall into three groups. Each of these groups occupies a different structural habitat which can be defined in terms of perch height and perch diameter. Within each of these three groups the species have very similar but not indential structural habitats but differ very widely in climatic habitat defined in terms of shade. Shade preferences seem to result from the temperature preferences of the species involved. In each group there is one species with high shade preference which is essentially restricted to the mountains. Each group also has a species with a lower shade preference which occurs in the lowlands and extends up into the mountains in exposed or sunny situations. One of the three groups has an additional species which is restricted to the hot and southwest corner of Puerto Rico. When one compares the temperature preferences or eccritic temperatures of the various species, one finds in each group that the highland species has a lower eccritic temperature than does the lowland species. There is little temperature difference between the lowland species and arid southwest species in the group where this additional third species is present. The species within each structural habitat show many morphological similarities which may be the result of their being closely related or may be the result of adaptation to similar environments. The differences in microhabitat between the Puerto Rican anoles separate them spatially though not completely. In species occupying different structural habitats in the same area the overlap may involve part of the home range of most of the individuals in the area. In species occupying the same structural but different climatic habitats the overlap may involve all of the home range of some individuals but of only a small fraction of the individuals in the total population. The spatial separation among Puerto Rican Anolis can be suggested to be of ecological significance because it reduces interspecific competition and because it allows the various species to adapt more precisely to different parts of the available habitat. Thus members of a genus may exploit the habitat more efficiently.

Abstract: The life of the rainbow lizard , The life of the rainbow lizard , مرکز فناوری اطلاعات و اطلاع رسانی کشاورزی