Great Basin Naturalist
Article Title
Homing in eastern fence lizards (Sceloporus undulatus) following short-distance translocation
Abstract
We conducted an experiment on eastern fence lizards (Sceloporus undulatus) during August–September 1995 near Los Alamos, New Mexico, (1) to ascertain if lizards that were relocated short distances exhibited homing, (2) to investigate a possible barrier to movement, and (3) to determine the effect of translocating individuals from a transplant area on lizards in a recipient area. We relocated 15 of an estimated population of 39 (95% CI 36–45) lizards an average distance of 46 m. Fourteen of 15 translocated lizards returned to within 6.81 (sx̄ = 1.43) m of the original capture location. Movement distances did not vary (F = 0.76; 1,53 df; P = 0.381) between resident and translocated lizards during the pretreatment period and did not vary for resident (F = 2.86; 1,12 df; P = 0.1166), but varied between pretreatment and posttreatment periods for translocated (F = 14.65, 1,7 df, P 0.0065) lizards. Translocated lizards did not affect the resighting probability of resident lizards (F = 0.96; 1,14 df; P = 0.34), but this may be related to low power (1 − β = 0.15) and translocated lizards moving out of the area quickly.
Recommended Citation
Hein, Eric W. and Whitaker, Shayna J.
(1997)
"Homing in eastern fence lizards (Sceloporus undulatus) following short-distance translocation,"
Great Basin Naturalist: Vol. 57:
No.
4, Article 6.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/gbn/vol57/iss4/6