Authors
William E Cooper, Mark A Paulissen, Jason J Habegger
Publication date
2000/7
Journal
Journal of Chemical Ecology
Volume
26
Pages
1623-1634
Publisher
Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers
Description
Sampling environmental chemicals to reveal prey and predators and to provide information about conspecifics is highly developed in lizards. Actively foraging lizards can discriminate between prey chemicals and control stimuli, but ambush foragers do not exhibit prey chemical discrimination. Recent experiments on a few species of herbivorous lizards have also demonstrated an ability to identify plant food chemicals. We studied chemosensory responses to chemicals from prey and palatable plants in two species of actively foraging, insectivorous lizards. Both the lacertid Takydromus sexlineatus and the teiid Cnemidophorus gularis exhibited strong responses to prey chemicals, but not to plant chemicals. These findings increase confidence in the relationship between prey chemical discrimination and foraging mode, which is based on data for very few species per family. They also provide data showing …
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