Savvides Pantelis, Stavrou Maria, Pafilis Panayiotis, Sfenthourakis Spyros
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cyprus, University Campus, P.O. Box 20537, 1678, Nicosia, Cyprus.
Section of Zoology and Marine Biology, Department of Biology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
Naturwissenschaften. 2017 Feb;104(1-2):3. doi: 10.1007/s00114-016-1425-5. Epub 2016 Dec 21.
Running is essential in all terrestrial animals mainly for finding food and mates and escaping from predators. Lizards employ running in all their everyday functions, among which defense stands out. Besides flight, tail autotomy is another very common antipredatory strategy within most lizard families. The impact of tail loss to sprint performance seems to be species dependent. In some lizard species, tail shedding reduces sprint speed, in other species, increases it, and, in a few species, speed is not affected at all. Here, we aimed to clarify the effect of tail autotomy on the sprint performance of a cursorial lizard with particular adaptations for running, such as bipedalism and spike-like protruding scales (fringes) on the toepads that allow high speed on sandy substrates. We hypothesized that individuals that performed bipedalism, and have more and larger fringes, would achieve higher sprint performance. We also anticipated that tail shedding would affect sprint speed (though we were not able to define in what way because of the unpredictable effects that tail loss has on different species). According to our results, individuals that ran bipedally were faster; limb length and fringe size had limited effects on sprint performance whereas tail autotomy affected quadrupedal running only in females. Nonetheless, tail loss significantly affected bipedalism: the ability for running on hindlimbs was completely lost in all adult individuals and in 72.3% of juveniles.
奔跑对于所有陆生动物来说至关重要，主要用于寻找食物、配偶以及躲避捕食者。蜥蜴在其日常活动中都会用到奔跑，其中防御尤为突出。除了逃跑，断尾是大多数蜥蜴家族中另一种非常常见的反捕食策略。尾巴缺失对冲刺表现的影响似乎因物种而异。在一些蜥蜴物种中，断尾会降低冲刺速度，在其他物种中则会提高冲刺速度，还有少数物种的速度完全不受影响。在此，我们旨在阐明断尾对一种具有特殊奔跑适应性的陆栖蜥蜴冲刺表现的影响，这些适应性包括两足行走以及脚趾垫上类似尖刺的突出鳞片（边缘），这使得它们在沙地表面能够高速奔跑。我们假设进行两足行走且边缘更多更大的个体将实现更高的冲刺表现。我们还预期断尾会影响冲刺速度（尽管由于尾巴缺失对不同物种有不可预测的影响，我们无法确定其影响方式）。根据我们的结果，两足奔跑的个体速度更快；肢体长度和边缘大小对冲刺表现的影响有限，而断尾仅对雌性的四足奔跑有影响。尽管如此，尾巴缺失对两足行走有显著影响：所有成年个体以及72.3%的幼年个体完全丧失了用后肢奔跑的能力。
