Watch out where you sleep: Nocturnal sleeping behaviour of Bay Island lizards
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Animal Behavior, Ecology, Zoology
- Keywords
- predator avoidance, site fidelity, tactile cues, agamid lizards, tropical islands, sleeping niches
- Copyright
- © 2016 Mohanty et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Watch out where you sleep: Nocturnal sleeping behaviour of Bay Island lizards. PeerJ Preprints 4:e1798v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1798v1
Abstract
Sleeping exposes lizards to predation. Therefore, sleeping strategies must be directed towards avoiding predation and might vary among syntopic species. We studied sleeping site characteristics of two syntopic, congeneric lizards - the Bay Island forest lizard, Coryphophylax subcristatus and the short-tailed Bay Island lizard, C. brevicaudus and evaluated inter-specific differences. We measured structural, microclimatic and potential predator avoidance at the sleeping perches of 386 C. subcristatus and 185 C. brevicaudus. Contrary to our expectation, we found similar perch use in both species. The lizards appeared to use narrow girth perch plants and accessed perches by moving both vertically and horizontally. Most lizards slept on leaves, with their heads directed towards the potential path of a predator approaching from the plant base. There was no inter-specific competition in the choices of sleeping perches. These choices indicate an anti-predator strategy involving both tactile and visual cues. This study provides insight into a rarely studied behaviour in reptiles and its adaptive significance.
Author Comment
This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints. This work is being peer-reviewed in PeerJ.
Supplemental Information
Key to the data on Coryphophylax sleeping behaviour
This file contains details of the variables used to collect data on sleeping behaviour of Coryphophylax lizards in Andaman Islands
Raw data on sleeping behaviour of Coryphophylax lizards collected from Andaman Islands
Raw data on sleeping behaviour of Coryphophylax lizards from Andaman Islands used to obtain results in the study