DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Ornament evolution in Anolis lizards: the interaction between survival and reproductive selection in a manipulative field experiment with replication

利用视觉信号吸引配偶的动物将自己的信息传递给了一个充满敌意的世界——捕食者、猎物、竞争者——所有这些都渴望拦截它们的信息。对野生动物来说，创造出既能吸引目标的注意力又不会引起不必要的注意的信号是一项持续的挑战。本研究的目的是揭示信号颜色的变化如何影响竞争选择力如何作用于新热带蜥蜴属的个体。具体来说，野外雄性的装饰颜色将被操纵，以观察它如何影响个体生存和繁殖成功。这项研究的另一个组成部分将是确定个体的结果如何根据竞争强度的种群水平变化而变化，这将通过操纵六个实验种群的性别比例来改变。这项研究将有助于阐明几种相互竞争的力量是如何相互冲突或协调一致地影响动物信号的，这是生态和进化生物学研究中的一个关键问题。动物信号的多样性，特别是视觉信号的多样性，被认为是创造物种多样性的重要力量；因此，这项研究的结果也可能有助于我们理解自然过程如何创造和维持物种多样性。

Animals that attract mates using visual signals are casting their message into a world full of hostile entities - predators, prey, competitors - all of which are eager to intercept their message. Creating signals that will capture the attention of the intended target without attracting unwanted attention is a constant challenge for wild animals. The objective of this study is to uncover how variation in signal color influences how competing selective forces act on the individual using lizards in the neotropical genus Anolis. Specifically, the ornament color of males in the wild will be manipulated to see how this affects individual survival and reproductive success. Another component of this study will be to determine how an individual's outcome can change depending on population-level variation in the strength of competition, which will be altered by manipulating the sex ratio in six experimental populations.This study will help elucidate how several competing forces can act in conflict or in concert to shape animal signals, a key question in the study of ecological and evolutionary biology. The diversity of animal signals, especially visual signals, is thought to be an important force in creating species diversity; the results of this research may therefore also contribute to our understanding of how natural processes create and maintain species diversity.