SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Oct. 4 (UPI) -- U.S. and French researchers have determined the behavioral strategies of European and North American lizards are identical.
University of California-Santa Cruz Professor Barry Sinervo said researchers found both species compete for food or mates in the same three ways, although the evolution of the two species diverged 175 million years ago.
"You either cooperate, take by force or take by deception," said Sinervo. Those strategies were predicted by evolutionary theorists Sewall Wright in 1968 and John Maynard Smith in 1982.
In 1996, Sinervo observed the strategies in North American lizards and expected to find other species using the same strategies.
"What's an incredible surprise is that it's so exactly the same … that's kind of amazing because it says either the game has evolved twice or it's (existed) since the time of the dinosaurs, when the two species last shared an ancestor."
The study that included Benoit Heulin and Yann Surget-Groba of the National Scientific Research Center of Paimpont, France; Jean Clobert of the CNRS Biological Station at Moulis, France; Donald Miles of Ohio University; graduate students Ammon Corl and Alison Davis and former graduate student Alexis Chaine appears in the November issue of American Naturalist.
