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Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Ryan Kaldari |
In a recent study of South American lizards of the Liolaemus genus (commonly called tree iguanas), native to Chile and Argentina, researchers discovered that interspecies sexual size dimorphism (hereafter called SSD according to the journal article) may be limiting speciation. The ecological niches, which can normally be filled by different species, may in fact be exploited by different sexes of the same species.You can read the rest by clicking on "Battle of the Sexes or Designed Lizard Niches?"
According to the prevailing theory, if SSD is driven by ecological opportunity alone, there should be no clear-cut trend for size dimorphism among males or females. Alternatively, if SSD is driven primarily by sexual selection, the expectation is that females would be consistently larger than males or vice versa.
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