Lizard Social Behavior

Zamudio, Cornell University.

Lizards exhibit, in a form that is simpler to isolate and study, many of the same traits of higher vertebrates. For this reason, zoologists have long chosen lizards as model systems to address questions that are central to ecological and evolutionary theory. This books brings together many of the most active researchers currently using lizards to study the evolution of social behavior, plus three well-known experts on behavior of other taxa for an outside perspective. Each author begins by developing one or more hypotheses, then presents data on a specific lizard system that addresses these issues. The chapters are arranged in three sections that reflect the primary levels at which behavioral ecologists examine adaptive variation in social behavior: individual variation within populations, variation among different populations of the same species, and variation among several species. Contributors: Troy A. Baird, University of Central Oklahoma; George W. Barlow, University of California-Berkeley; Philip W. Bateman, University of Pretoria; Marguerite Butler, University of California-Berkeley; William E. Cooper, Jr., Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne; Stanley F. Fox, Oklahoma State University; Paul J. Gier, Huntington College; Masami Hasegawa, Natural History Museum and Institute, Chiba, Japan; Diana K. Hews, Indiana State University; Jonathan B. Losos, Washington University; Peter Marler, University of California-Davis; J. Kelly McCoy, Angelo State University; Kenneth A. Nagy, University of California-Los Angeles; Gordon H. Orians, University of Washington; Vanessa S. Quinn, Indiana State University; Thomas W. Schoener, University of California-Davis; Paul A. Shipman, Oklahoma State University; Barry Sinervo, University of California-Santa Cruz; Chris L. Sloan, University of Central Oklahoma; Heidi M. Snell, Charles Darwin Research Station, Ecuador; Howard L. Snell, University of New Mexico; Paul A. Stone, University of Central Oklahoma; Dusti K. Timanus, University of Central Oklahoma; Martin J. Whiting, the University of Witwatersrand; Kelly R. Zamudio, Cornell University.

This is an original, substantial, and long-needed contribution. The introduction places the subject in context and shows how lizards can provide unique information not readily available through study of other organisms. The book is logically organized, beginning with a focus on individual variation, moving to comparisons between populations, and finishing with species comparisons. Readers with a general interest in social behavior will be drawn to peruse other sections where they will find, as I did, an abundance of additional interesting and informative material.
—George A. Middendorf III, Howard University