Urbanization affects refuge use and habituation to predators in a polymorphic lizard
Section snippets
Sampling and Housing
During spring 2014 (April–May, corresponding to the species' mating season in Italy) we captured sexually mature male lizards at two sites located in different habitats. The ‘urban’ site was located within a small town near Pavia, Lombardy (45°14′03.75″N, 9°10′41.67″E). Lizards were captured on concrete or wood structures within anthropic environments, in microhabitats such as boundary walls of houses, orchards, gardens, walls along roads, wood and tool sheds. The ‘rural’ site was located 30 km
Results
Overall, lizards were observed outside the refuge before an attack significantly more often than they were observed inside it (repeated measures ANOVA: F1,47 = 22.41, P < 0.0001) and leaning out (F1,47 = 30.88, P < 0.0001). Lizards hid in the refuge when subjected to the simulated attack; after that they usually first appeared from the refuge, monitored the outdoor environment for some time and finally emerged entirely. The habituation indices related to appearance and emergence generally showed a
Discussion
In the present study, we found that various factors, related to both environmental conditions and ventral colour polymorphism, might affect antipredator responses in male common wall lizards. First, habitat could affect antipredator responses, principally in relation to human disturbance. We are aware that our study has the limitation that we examined only one population for each habitat due to logistical difficulties in using many animals from multiple sites. For this reason, we cannot ensure
Acknowledgments
We thank two anonymous referees for their constructive comments, which helped us to improve the manuscript, Professor Paolo Galeotti for providing the necessary facilities for maintaining lizards in indoor conditions and Dr Guido Bernini for help in the field. Financial support for the study was partially provided by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad projects CGL2011-24150/BOS and CGL2014-53523-P.
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2022, Behavioural ProcessesCitation Excerpt :Because habituation mechanisms rely on prior experience with stimuli similar to the one under habituation, life history is the most straightforward explanation for the origin of inter-individual differences in habituation. This idea has been supported, for example, by studies showing that animals living in urban centers are more habituated to human disturbance than individuals of the same species living in the wild (Allan et al., 2020; Blumstein, 2016; Pellitteri-Rosa et al., 2017; Rodríguez-Prieto and Fernández-Juricic, 2005; Samia et al., 2015; Thompson et al., 2018; Vincze et al., 2016). However, life-history is not the only reason for inter-individual differences in habituation.
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2018, Behavioural ProcessesCitation Excerpt :For example, a study on house sparrows demonstrated that urban individuals habituated faster to human disturbance than their rural conspecific which reflects their behavioural plasticity (Vincze et al., 2016). Similarly, common wall lizard from urban habitats seems to habituate faster than rural individuals (Pellitteri-Rosa et al., 2017). In our study, rural owls showed greater FIDs than urban owls in both treatments which is in accordance with all the work done in burrowing owls on this matter (e.g., Carrete and Tella, 2013; Cavalli et al., 2016a,b; Rebolo-Ifrán et al., 2017).
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2018, Behavioural ProcessesCitation Excerpt :However, a significant effect of sex on waiting times repeatability emerged only in the European pond turtles, while Spanish terrapins seemed to be more flexible regardless of sex. This could be related to differences in habitat features or potential predator species, as shown in other species of turtles and lizards (Polo-Cavia et al., 2008; Bateman et al., 2014; Pellitteri-Rosa et al., 2017), leading to a more flexible choice as a more advantageous escape strategy. Righting efficiency was repeatable among individuals of both species during the three trials.
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Both authors contributed equally to the work.