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Lizards Cooperatively Tunnel to Construct a Long-Term Home for Family Members
Constructing a home to protect offspring while they mature is common in many vertebrate groups, but has not previously been reported in lizards. Here we provide the first example of a lizard that constructs a long-term home for family members, and a rare case of lizards behaving cooperatively. The g...
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2011
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092757/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21589923 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019041 |
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author | McAlpin, Steve Duckett, Paul Stow, Adam |
author_facet | McAlpin, Steve Duckett, Paul Stow, Adam |
author_sort | McAlpin, Steve |
collection | PubMed |
description | Constructing a home to protect offspring while they mature is common in many vertebrate groups, but has not previously been reported in lizards. Here we provide the first example of a lizard that constructs a long-term home for family members, and a rare case of lizards behaving cooperatively. The great desert skink, Liopholis kintorei from Central Australia, constructs an elaborate multi-tunnelled burrow that can be continuously occupied for up to 7 years. Multiple generations participate in construction and maintenance of burrows. Parental assignments based on DNA analysis show that immature individuals within the same burrow were mostly full siblings, even when several age cohorts were present. Parents were always captured at burrows containing their offspring, and females were only detected breeding with the same male both within- and across seasons. Consequently, the individual investments made to construct or maintain a burrow system benefit their own offspring, or siblings, over several breeding seasons. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-3092757 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2011 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-30927572011-05-17 Lizards Cooperatively Tunnel to Construct a Long-Term Home for Family Members McAlpin, Steve Duckett, Paul Stow, Adam PLoS One Research Article Constructing a home to protect offspring while they mature is common in many vertebrate groups, but has not previously been reported in lizards. Here we provide the first example of a lizard that constructs a long-term home for family members, and a rare case of lizards behaving cooperatively. The great desert skink, Liopholis kintorei from Central Australia, constructs an elaborate multi-tunnelled burrow that can be continuously occupied for up to 7 years. Multiple generations participate in construction and maintenance of burrows. Parental assignments based on DNA analysis show that immature individuals within the same burrow were mostly full siblings, even when several age cohorts were present. Parents were always captured at burrows containing their offspring, and females were only detected breeding with the same male both within- and across seasons. Consequently, the individual investments made to construct or maintain a burrow system benefit their own offspring, or siblings, over several breeding seasons. Public Library of Science 2011-05-11 /pmc/articles/PMC3092757/ /pubmed/21589923 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019041 Text en McAlpin et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article McAlpin, Steve Duckett, Paul Stow, Adam Lizards Cooperatively Tunnel to Construct a Long-Term Home for Family Members |
title | Lizards Cooperatively Tunnel to Construct a Long-Term Home for Family Members |
title_full | Lizards Cooperatively Tunnel to Construct a Long-Term Home for Family Members |
title_fullStr | Lizards Cooperatively Tunnel to Construct a Long-Term Home for Family Members |
title_full_unstemmed | Lizards Cooperatively Tunnel to Construct a Long-Term Home for Family Members |
title_short | Lizards Cooperatively Tunnel to Construct a Long-Term Home for Family Members |
title_sort | lizards cooperatively tunnel to construct a long-term home for family members |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092757/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21589923 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019041 |
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