ArticleScientific reports2017
Dietary constraints can preclude the expression of an honest chemical sexual signal.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Chemical signal diversity in male sand lizards (Lacerta agilis) along an urbanization gradient.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The chemistry and histology of sexually dimorphic mental glands in the freshwater turtle,PeerJ · 2020Article
- Article
- Seasonal and interpopulational phenotypic variation in morphology and sexual signals of Podarcis liolepis lizards.PloS one · 2019Article
- Costs of injury for scent signalling in a strepsirrhine primate.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- How to tackle chemical communication? Relative proportions versus semiquantitative determination of compounds in lizard chemical secretions.Ecology and evolution · 2018Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Identifying the factors that underlie signal divergences remains challenging in studies of animal communication. Regarding the chemical signalling, different compounds can be found in some species but be absent in others. We hypothesized that if the costs that are associated with the expression of some compounds are too high, their presence in the signal may be restricted. However, these compounds may be expressed and be functional when those costs are relaxed. Vitamin E (α-tocopherol), a dietary compound with metabolic relevancy, acts as an honest chemical sexual signal in many lizards but no in others such as the Carpetan Rock lizard (Iberolacerta cyreni). We investigated whether dietary supplementation favours the expression of this vitamin in scents of I. cyreni. We show that dietary constraints can preclude the expression of vitamin E in chemical secretions of wild males because was expressed when it was experimentally provided in the diet. Vitamin E supplementation also heightened the immune response of males and increased the interest of their scent for females, highlighting the vitamin E as a chemical sexual signal in this species. We suggest that diet could decisively act as a driver of intra- and interspecific divergences in the chemical signalling of lizards.
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