The Western Whiptail Lizard

Ontogeny is the course of development of an individual organism from fertilization to adulthood. For the western whiptail lizard, Aspidoscelis tigris, there ontogeny (development) could be impacted by the habitat they hatch in.

Many times when out looking for lizards, especially spiny lizards I can approximate a lizard’s age by it’s size, however this study suggests, that for A. tigris body size may depend more on environment than age for adult lizards.

If an individual hatches in an environment that has better living conditions (more resources like food and better hiding places from predators), they will grow larger than those that don’t.

So a big size does not necessarily equal a big age. Whereas other lizard species will grow to a certain final size no matter what.

To come to their conclusions, Peterman et al. did a osteohistology (studied the bones) of 29 western whiptail lizards.

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