Tree selection is linked to locomotor performance and associated noise production in fence lizards

New paper in Journal of Zoology featuring Kirsty, Tracy, and Nicole! The substrates on which animals spend their time can affect how they look, move, and sound. We found fence lizards more frequently on deciduous trees, on which they sprint faster and produce less noise relative to coniferous trees, which may affect their ability to catch prey or evade detection by predators. Noisiness and performance have received less attention in the context of substrate preferences than visual camouflage, but our results suggest they may also be important in determining the surfaces on which lizards prefer to be. (Check out the paper: Tree selection is linked to locomotor performance and associated noise production in a lizard.)

In the summer of 2016 I began a large-scale experiment investigating the effects of maternal stress on offspring characteristics in the eastern fence lizard, Sceloporus undulatus. My primary mission for the first part of that summer was simple: catch as many lizards as possible in the longleaf pine forests of southern Alabama. When you spend most of your day pursuing a small prey species, you quickly start to think like a predator. In what areas are you most likely to find them? At what times? On what surfaces? The cumulative years of experience of my fieldwork team (colleagues from the Langkilde lab) suggested that fence lizards were mostly found where there was a mix of hardwood deciduous trees and pines, and that they preferred the deciduous trees, like oaks and hickory, to the famous pines of the region. The longer I spent looking for lizards, the more I noticed that this observation held true. I didn’t put much thought into why until one day when I followed a lizard into a small stand of pine trees. I momentarily lost sight of the lizard, until I heard a loud scrabbling from a few metres away – there was the lizard, scuttling up a pine tree on the smooth, dry flakes of its bark. If the noise of the lizard’s claws moving on the pine bark alerted me so easily to its presence, I thought, perhaps the same was true for its real predators! Also – perhaps that noise was indication that this type of bark, with fewer crenulations and ridges on which to grip, was more difficult for the lizard to run on. Together, could these provide a reason that fence lizards seem to avoid pine trees despite their prevalence?

We decided to test this in the field. First, we quantified whether our anecdotal hunch that lizards prefer deciduous trees to conifers (pines) was really true by conducting thorough searches for fence lizards throughout our field sites, and noting the tree type we found them on, as well as the availability of trees in that area. This allowed us to test whether lizards were “choosing” deciduous trees in areas where they could also choose pines, as opposed to just being found in areas with only deciduous trees. As we expected, we found that even when availability of coniferous:deciduous trees was more or less 1:1, lizards were overwhelmingly found on deciduous trees, not pines.

Next, we tested our hypotheses that tree type changes how noisy lizards are when they move, and how quickly they are able to move. We did this by releasing wild lizards on either coniferous or deciduous trees, and then recording them as we stimulated them to run upwards on the tree by gently tickling their back legs. We then analysed these recordings and found, as we predicted, that the noise of lizards running (the sound level they produced when running compared to the background noise when they were still) was significantly higher when they were running on the smooth, flakier bark of coniferous trees. We also found that the sprint speed they attained on coniferous trees was lower than on deciduous trees. In other words: they are noisy and slow on pine bark compared to the bark of trees like oaks and hickorys.

Studies investigating where animals spend their time (either in terms of broader habitat preference, or more localised use of substrates) has often focused on coloration, and the camouflage it may or may not afford. Our study shows that other aspects of camouflage, such as acoustic camouflage, may also be important. It’s also important to consider how substrate affects performance, like sprinting speed: once you’re spotted by a predator, the speed at which you’re able to escape may be just as important as trying to remain hidden in the first place.

This was one of my favourite studies to be involved in, for a number of reasons! First, I love that we were able to find ways to test hypotheses based on a very simple natural history observation. Understanding the natural history of an organism is crucial for developing new ideas – and the “why does this happen?” questions are the bedrock of behavioural ecology. Second, this study was an opportunity to bring together friends and start new collaborations! Langkilde lab alum Nicole Freidenfelds brought her great knowledge and understanding of herpetofauna and natural history; local friends in Alabama helped me to identify tree species; I knew of Gavin’s prowess in acoustic analysis through Twitter, and asked him to help with this aspect of the project; and Tracy and I had a blast exploring these ideas with them!

Survival and reproductive costs of repeated acute glucocorticoid elevations – new paper in GCE

New paper out featuring Kirsty, David, Dustin, and Tracy!

You can read a summary of this work and why it’s important on Kirsty’s blog, here. Kirsty has now moved on to a Marie Curie fellowship that will take her to Lund University, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Tasmania! Follow her blog, and Twitter, for updates.

Maternal glucocorticoid effects across life stages in fence lizards – new paper!

“Anthropogenic disturbance is a growing threat, and the physiological consequences of exposure to such stressors is gaining increasing attention. A recent paper published in the Journal of Animal Ecology explores the consequences of stress-relevant hormones for mothers and their offspring…”

Read more in David’s new paper, and featured blogpost on the Journal of Animal Ecology blog!

Sex-dependent effects of maternal stress in lizards

Check out the second chapter of Dustin’s thesis on the “Sex‐dependent effects of maternal stress: Stressed moms invest less in sons than daughters”!

Multigenerational effects can have important and sex‐dependent effects on offspring. Sex allocation theory predicts that females should differentially invest in sons and daughters depending on sex‐specific fitness returns and costs of investment. Maternal stress‐relevant (glucocorticoid) hormones may be one mechanism driving this effect. We investigated how maternal stress hormones differentially affected sons and daughters by manipulating levels of the glucocorticoid, corticosterone (CORT), in gravid female eastern fence lizards (Sceloporus undulatus) and quantifying reproductive investment and sex ratio of resulting clutches, and the mass, snout‐vent length, and body condition of sons versus daughters at hatching. We found no effect of maternal CORT‐treatment on the number or size of eggs laid or on the sex ratio of resulting offspring, but sons of CORT‐treated mothers were shorter, lighter, and of poorer body condition at hatching than were sons of control mothers. We found no difference in size or condition of daughters with maternal treatment. Our results suggest that maternal stress, mediated by elevations in maternal CORT concentrations, can have sex‐specific effects on offspring manifesting as lower investment in sons.

Undergraduate research in the spotlight!

The Langkilde lab was well-represented at this year’s Undergraduate Research Symposium by three of our lab researchers! It’s been an excellent year for undergraduate research. Congratulations to Richard Novak, Kristen Sprayberry, and Andrea Racic on their poster presentations! Not pictured is Jennifer Heppner, who also completed a brilliant thesis in the Langkilde lab this year. It’s been a pleasure having you all in the lab, and we will be sorry to see you go – but look forward to hearing about your future endeavours!

A New Blood Sampling Method for Smaller Anurans that Preserves Critical Features of Specimens

Another new paper from Dustin In Herpetological Review! Summary below.

Obtaining adequate blood samples is vital for most studies involving immunology or physiology. Anurans (frogs and toads) present a particular challenge for obtaining adequate samples, largely because of their relatively small size compared to other vertebrates.

Here, we propose a new method for obtaining large amounts of blood from the ventral abdominal vein of euthanized frogs, which we call the lethal abdominal vein of anurans (LAVA) technique.

We tested this method on the locally common Wood Frog (Lithobates sylvaticus –  pictured above). Using the LAVA technique, we were able to collect blood from 100% of frogs. Each frog yielded an average of 0.09 mL (range: 0.03 to 0.17 mL) of blood, which contained an average of 40 µL (range: 15 to 100 µL) of plasma.

We also found that neither size, ambient temperature, nor site affected our blood yields. We show that the LAVA technique is an easy-to-use method that yields high amounts of blood from anurans, and could be potentially viable in other small vertebrates.

Offspring influenced by their evolutionary history more than their own experience in fence lizards

Check out the first chapter of Dustin’s thesis on the “Trans-generational but not early life exposure to stressors influences offspring morphology and survival”, recently published in Oecologia!

Environmental changes, such as the introduction of non-native species, can impose novel selective pressures. This can result in changes in fitness-relevant traits within an individual’s lifetime or across multiple generations. We investigated the effects of early life versus trans-generational exposure to a predatory invasive insect stressor, the red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta), on the morphology and survival of the eastern fence lizard (Sceloporus undulatus). We captured gravid lizards from high-stress populations with long histories of invasion by fire ants and from uninvaded sites. Resulting hatchlings were exposed weekly to one of the three treatments until they reached maturity (42 weeks): (1) sub-lethal attack by fire ants; (2) topical application of the stress-relevant hormone, corticosterone (CORT), to mimic the stress of fire ant attack; or (3) control handling. Exposure to post-natal early life stress (fire ants or CORT) did not interact with a population’s evolutionary history of stress to affect morphology or survival and early life stress did not affect these fitness-relevant traits. However, morphology and survival were associated with the lizards’ evolutionary history of exposure to fire ants. Offspring of lizards from fire ant invaded sites had longer and faster growing hind-limbs, gained body length and lost condition more slowly in the first 16 weeks, and had lower in-lab survival to 42 weeks, compared to lizards from uninvaded sites. These results suggest that a population’s history of stress/invasion caused by fire ants during ca. 38 generations may be more important in driving survival-relevant traits than are the early life experiences of an organism.

You can read more about Dustin’s research here and here! 

Testing the environmental matching hypothesis – return to Alabama!

Another summer field season has now come and gone! This summer I returned to Solon Dixon Forestry Education Center in Alabama (one of my favourite spots on earth!) to continue my research on how stress during gestation influences the offspring of eastern fence lizards (Sceloporus undulatus).

Last year, we investigated how physiological stress during gestation (at the level of a non-lethal predator encounter – for example, when a lizard encounters a couple of toxic fire ants, but isn’t killed by the ants) affects survival of mothers, and how many of their eggs successfully hatch. You can read more about this experiment, and the fieldwork that went into it, here (and stay posted for the published results soon!).

This year I wanted to build on these results and ideas to test how maternal stress influences the offspring that do hatch and make it out into the world. Do they themselves then cope better with a stressful environment, having been “primed” for it by their mothers (the “environmental matching” hypothesis)? Or are offspring born to stressed mothers poorer in quality, and less likely to survive in the wild, regardless of how stressful their environment is? In order to test these ideas, we first made the long trip south to collect gravid females from south Alabama early in the summer, and to build experimental enclosures in which to eventually release their offspring. I then repeated the maternal stress treatment from last year and once again became a lizard mama as I followed the females from laying their eggs, to incubating the eggs, and eventually seeing these bite-sized babies hatch out!

Freshly hatched fence lizards – <1g!

Once they hatched, the offspring went into the enclosures that we’d built. These enclosures were designed to test whether maternal stress programs offspring to be able to better deal with a stressful environment. The enclosures either contained a key stressor (invasive fire ants), or were fire ant-free. Each day I conducted a mini-census, walking through enclosures to look for each lizard – as you can see in the video below, babies were marked so I could tell exactly who was present each day (and so, which lizards survived, and which didn’t). I also observed their behaviour, and how they used the habitat available to them (for example, did offspring from stressed/non-stressed mothers differ in whether they liked to be out in the open, like the lizards you see in the video – or did they hide more?).

After a great summer (if measuring 200+ baby lizards isn’t a metric of a great summer, I don’t know what is), I’m now back at Penn State with a box of data to work through. I’m excited to report back on what I found in the coming months – so stay tuned!

 

 

Hanging out with an adult female Sceloporus at Solon Dixon

Beautiful Solon Dixon

It’s fieldwork season!

The lab is currently busy with a variety of field and lab-based projects. In April/May, Cam, David, Tom, and I were in Alabama collecting lizards. Here’s a glimpse of what the long trip to the South, and our work there, looks like! Check back later in the summer for more on the continuation of this project.

Switching fields

Hello, my name is Heather Engler. I have been working as a research assistant in the Langkilde lab since May 2016. And yet my background is not in biology. Instead, I have a B.S. degree in Accounting from Murray State University. So how did I wind up going from business to biology?

I began dating Dustin Owen, my boyfriend, while he was at Austin Peay State University. I was fascinated with his reptile research because I have always enjoyed learning about animals. So I naturally took an interest in his new eastern fence lizard research here at Penn State. I was really lucky that Tracy Langkilde didn’t mind me spending time with Dustin in her lab. I got to learn about all sorts of things from various lab members.

Last summer, Dustin and some of his new lab mates caught lots of eastern fence lizards to be used in their research projects. They were busy with their research, so they needed someone else to take care of the lizards on a daily basis. Since I had not landed an accounting job, Dustin put in a good word for me with Tracy. Luckily, she was willing to give me a chance.

Female fence lizard digging a nest (photo: Heather Engler)

I absolutely loved taking care of those lizards last summer! Some of the females became gravid, and I got to help collect the eggs after they finished laying them. After all of the females had laid their eggs, it was time to incubate them in the lab. One random day in July, I was checking on the eggs and noticed some tiny bodies. The first of the eggs had hatched! It was so cool because the hatchlings were so little compared to the adults. Since we were short staffed at the time, I got to help record the morphology data on the hatchlings. I even learned how to toe clip them. I had never done this kind of work before, so it was a fun learning experience.

Since I had done such a good job with the adults, Tracy let me also take care of the hatchlings. And it has been a blast watching over those lizards. It won’t be too much longer until they’re fully matured adults. I’m even getting to help on a side project concerning them. Braulio Assis, one of the current grad students in the lab, has been taking photos of the juvenile lizards at 9 week intervals. One of the things he wants to know is if testosterone levels are related to the size of male cloaca scales. I’m helping to answer this question by measuring the area of the male cloaca scales in the photographs of the male juveniles. I get to use this really cool software, called ImageJ, to trace around the scales in order to get the measurements.

Hatchling fence lizards (photo: Heather Engler)

If you had told me 5 years ago that I would go from working in the accounting department of an engineering firm to working in the lab of a world famous biologist, I wouldn’t have believed you. But here I am. I have moved from business to biology, and I couldn’t be happier.

 

photos: Heather Engler

 

[posted on behalf of Heather Engler]