The colour of success: does female mate choice rely on male colour change in the chameleon Furcifer pardalis?....

Wow. .... I mean.... wow. 😲

Is this what love has come to

No time to digest this right now; not sure I could even understand the math.
I was hoping for a 'Conclusions' section at the end. 🤷‍♂️


Maybe someone can boil it down for us unwashed masses(?)
 
I found it particularly interesting about the carotenoids. Maybe that's why we have to be more aware of the vitamin A levels in Panther chameleons than some of the other species?

The comment "if a female engaged in copulation, meaning that it was potentially gravid, the experiment was not repeated more than twice to prevent potential stress-related dystocia (DeNardo, 2005)"...never heard about stress related dystocia from this. I wish I'd talked to him about it when I met him.

Also found this very interesting..."During our mate choice experiments, we did observe cases where a female exhibited active receptive behaviour, yet males did not respond to those signals (see Table 1) (N=16). In some cases, the male even fiercely rejected the female (i.e. biting or lunging at the female). Although this is suggestive of male mate choice, the female traits upon which male preference might be based remain to be investigated." I wonder if it happened after she had mated with one male but hadn't changed to her nonreceptive colors yet and might be giving off some other type of signal that wasn't visual?

Sorry @Klyde O'Scope ...you're on your own at the moment past that comment. I need to read it a few more times too and also look at the veileds after their comment about them since IMHO, they aren't in as much need for vitamin A supplementation.
 
Last edited:
Also found this very interesting..."During our mate choice experiments, we did observe cases where a female exhibited active receptive behaviour, yet males did not respond to those signals (see Table 1) (N=16). In some cases, the male even fiercely rejected the female (i.e. biting or lunging at the female). Although this is suggestive of male mate choice, the female traits upon which male preference might be based remain to be investigated."
https://www.amazon.com/Traditional-Chameleon-Pocket-Pride-Week/dp/B07SSRX89Z :unsure:

I wonder if it happened after she had mated with one male but hadn't changed to her nonreceptive colors yet and might be giving off some other type of signal that wasn't visual?
How long could that take? IME, most color changes take less than a minute.
 
Some females take a few hours to change to their gravid colors. Some will mate several times before changing.
 
Back
Top Bottom