U.S. Department of Agriculture: Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications
ORCID IDs
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3318-7329 L.M. Aubry
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
2020
Citation
Aubry, L.M., S.B. Hudson, B.M. Kluever, A.C. Webb, and S.S. French. 2020. Competing reproductive and physiological investments in an all-female lizard, the Colorado checkered whiptail. Evolutionary Ecology 34:999-1016.
doi: 10.1007/s10682-020-10081-x
Abstract
Organisms in the wild have to allocate limited resources towards competing functions such as reproduction, growth, and self-maintenance. These competing investments create significant changes in physiological activity, and we still know little about the relationship between physiological activity and reproductive investment in natura. We investigated trade-offs between physiological activity and reproductive investment in the parthenogenetic Colorado checkered whiptail, Aspidoscelis neotesselata, across three different sites at the US Army Fort Carson Military Installation near Colorado Springs, CO, through-out the reproductive season in 2018 and 2019. We measured clutch size and reproductive activity and quantified plasma corticosterone (CORT), reactive oxygen metabolites (ROMs), and bacterial killing ability (BKA) to examine how energy-mobilizing hormones, oxidative stress, and immunity change in light of reproductive investment across different sub-populations. Circulating CORT increased with reproductive investment across all sub-populations, and increased clutch size led to a decrease in BKA in one sub-population, suggesting that habitat and nutritional availability may mediate this relationship. Oxidative stress, CORT, and innate immunity were not correlated with the exception of a trade-off between ROMs and BKA. This indicates individuals that have a better capacity to fight-off pathogens suffered increased reactive oxygen metabolites across all sub-populations, independently of habitat characteristics, which has important implications for A. neotesselata conservation.
Included in
Natural Resources and Conservation Commons, Natural Resources Management and Policy Commons, Other Environmental Sciences Commons, Other Veterinary Medicine Commons, Population Biology Commons, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology Commons, Veterinary Infectious Diseases Commons, Veterinary Microbiology and Immunobiology Commons, Veterinary Preventive Medicine, Epidemiology, and Public Health Commons, Zoology Commons
Comments
US gov't work.