What Determines Paternity in Wild Lizards? A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Behavior and

Morphology

The article concerns animals mating and the complex sequence of behavioral,

physiological, ecological, and biomechanical events. Sexual selection is naturally occurring in

the population and frequently physical and behavioral make it easier to understand intuitively

within the social context of a species. Anolis lizards are territorial, with male territories larger

than the female but the females’ territories by habitat quality, not male traits. Traditionally,

female choice plays a minimal in male reproduction, but studies show that turnover in territory

occupancy and extensive spatial overlap in anole populations. Genetic studies reveal the

prevalence of female multiple mating, suggesting the potential for sexual selection through

female mate choice. They conducted a study on adult A. cristatellus lizards by using dental floss

or hand then determined sex and measured SVL. They observed the lizards’ behaviors and

determined their locations for statistical analysis. They also observe female Anolis lizards lay

eggs, collect the eggs, and analyze the offspring. As the results of the observations and

experiments they successfully collected 178 offspring from 27 females and assigned paternity to

173 offspring (97%). The prevalence of female multiple mating should inform future sexual

selection considerations in the species.

About 3 pages – summary this article

Part II. The Written Report (50 points)

Written Report Format (see also Guidelines for written reports):

Length: Three pages (#¼ page), not including bibliography and diagrams.

Cover: No report cover, binder, or separate title page.

Title: In your own words, not the title of the article (you didn’t write that; someone else

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did.)

Content: In 3 pages, you cannot thoroughly review all of the details in a full research paper.

Instead, you will focus on 1 or 2 of the experiments executed by the authors of the article.

In your paper explain the article including the introduction, methodology, results, and discussion,

including the most important finding of your source article. You may need to include graphs to

do this. Attach graphs on separate pages and reference them in the format of the journal. The

idea behind this part of the assignment is to demonstrate your comprehension of the article by

summarizing the most important parts of it.

Writing: The paper must be written in your own words in the third person. Summary of the

materials and methods section of the paper are in the past tense. With some exceptions, other

sections are in the present tense. Do not simply paraphrase or quote the authors(s) of your source

article. The sentences in your paper must be written by you. If you don’t understand an article

well enough to discuss it in your own words you can visit me during office hours or during lab,

and I can address any questions you might have about your paper. Quotes from the article are not

acceptable. If any sentence or portion of a sentence has been simply copied from the article, I

will stop grading your paper immediately and score it a zero.

Any quotes from the article, even properly done, will be ignored and not considered part of your

paper.

Attach a paf copy of the article as a comment when you submit your paper on Canvas.

Bibliography: For your source article and for any other sources that you may also have used,

provide a full bibliographic reference at the end of your written report. Use the bibliographic

format included in the handout, “Guidelines for Written Assignments.” Keep in mind that there is

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no requirement for you to do research beyond your source article unless you chose to do so to

achieve a better comprehension of its topic.

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Bibliography

Johnson, M. A., Kamath, A., Kirby, R., Fresquez, C. C., Wang, S., Stehle, C. M., Templeton, A.

R., & Losos, J. B. (2021, June 2). What Determines Paternity in Wild Lizards? A Spatiotemporal

Analysis of Behavior and Morphology. Integrative and Comparative Biology, 61(2), 634–642.