Althoff David M, Thompson John N
Department of Zoology, Washington State University, 99163, Pullman, WA, USA.
Department of Botany and Zoology, Washington State University, 99163, Pullman, WA, USA.
Oecologia. 1994 Dec;100(3):250-255. doi: 10.1007/BF00316952.
We examined the effects of tail autotomy on survivorship and body growth of both adult and juvenile Uta stansburiana by directly manipulating tail condition. Tail loss decreased neither survivorship nor rate of body growth for individuals in two natural populations. Lack of an influence of tail loss on survivorship in these two populations may be the result of high mortality. Under high mortality any differential effects of tail loss will be lower than in populations facing lower mortality. Growth experiments in the laboratory demonstrated that, under conditions of minimal environmental variation and social interactions, there is no tradeoff between body growth and tail regeneration as has been suggested for other species of lizards. One possible reason for this difference is that U. stansburiana does not use the tail as a storage organ for lipids. The original and regenerated tails are composed mainly of protein. In general, any differential body growth between tailed and tailless individuals may be due to social interactions and not a diversion of limited energy into tail regeneration.
我们通过直接控制尾部状况，研究了断尾对成年和幼年斯氏强棱蜥（Uta stansburiana）的存活率和身体生长的影响。在两个自然种群中，断尾既未降低个体的存活率，也未降低其身体生长速率。在这两个种群中，断尾对存活率缺乏影响可能是高死亡率导致的。在高死亡率情况下，断尾的任何差异效应都将低于面临较低死亡率的种群。实验室中的生长实验表明，在环境变化极小且社会互动极少的条件下，与其他蜥蜴物种的情况不同，身体生长和尾部再生之间不存在权衡。造成这种差异的一个可能原因是，斯氏强棱蜥不将尾巴用作脂质的储存器官。原来的尾巴和再生的尾巴主要由蛋白质组成。一般来说，有尾和无尾个体之间的任何身体生长差异可能是由于社会互动，而非有限能量被转移用于尾部再生。
