Receiver perception predicts species divergence in long-range communication

Signal detection shapes ornament allometry in functionally convergent Caribbean Anolis and Southeast Asian Draco lizards

Visual ornaments have long been assumed to evolve hyper-allometry as an outcome of sexual selection. Yet growing evidence suggests many sexually selected morphologies can exhibit other scaling patterns with body size, including hypo-allometry. The large conspicuous throat fan, or dewlap, of arboreal Caribbean Anolis lizards was one ornament previously thought to conform to the classical expectation of hyper-allometry. We re-evaluated this classic example alongside a second arboreal group of lizards that has also independently evolved a functionally equivalent dewlap, the Southeast Asian Draco lizards. Across multiple closely related species in both genera, the Anolis and Draco dewlaps were either isometric or had hypo-allometric scaling patterns. In the case of the Anolis dewlap, variation in dewlap allometry was predicted by the distance of conspecifics and the light environment in which the dewlap was typically viewed. Signal efficacy, therefore, appears to have driven the evolution of hypo-allometry in what was originally thought to be a sexually selected ornament with hyper-allometry. Our findings suggest that other elaborate morphological structures used in social communication might similarly exhibit isometric or hypo-allometric scaling patterns because of environmental constraints on signal detection.

Strategic inattention in the Sir Philip Sidney Game

Infamously, the presence of honest communication in a signaling environment may be difficult to reconcile with small (relative) signaling costs or a low degree of common interest between sender (beneficiary) and receiver (donor). This paper posits that one mechanism through which such communication can arise is through inattention on the part of the receiver, which allows for honest communication in settings where-should the receiver be fully attentive-honest communication would be impossible. We explore this idea through the Sir Philip Sidney game in detail and show that some degree of inattention is always weakly better for the receiver and may be strictly better. We compare limited attention to Lachmann and Bergstrom's (1998) notion of a signaling medium and show that the receiver-optimal degree of inattention is equivalent to the receiver-optimal choice of medium.

Historical contingency and behavioural divergence in territorial Anolis lizards

The extent that evolution - including adaptation - is historically contingent (dependent on past events) has often been hotly debated, but is still poorly understood. In particular, there are little data on the degree that behaviour, an aspect of the phenotype that is strongly linked to contemporary environments (social or physical), retains the imprint of evolutionary history. In this study, I examined whether differences in the design of the territorial displays among species of Caribbean Anolis lizards reflect island-specific selection regimes, or historically contingent predispositions associated with different clade histories. Adult males advertise territory ownership using a series of headbobs and dewlap extensions, bouts of which vary in duration among species. When display durations were mapped onto the Anolis phylogeny, prominent differences between species belonging to the Western and Eastern Caribbean radiations were apparent. Statistical analyses confirmed that species differences in the duration of headbob displays, and to some extent the duration of dewlap extensions, were historically contingent. The unique evolutionary histories of each clade have seemingly had a profound effect on the subsequent direction of display evolution among descendent taxa. These results combined with those from previous studies on these lizards show that past history can have an important impact on the type of behaviour exhibited by species today, to the point that adaptive evolution can proceed quite differently in lineages originating from different evolutionary starting points.