{"id":184,"date":"2009-01-27T12:45:13","date_gmt":"2009-01-27T16:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=184"},"modified":"2009-01-27T12:45:13","modified_gmt":"2009-01-27T16:45:13","slug":"how-fence-lizards-got-their-shimmy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2009\/01\/27\/how-fence-lizards-got-their-shimmy\/","title":{"rendered":"How fence lizards got their shimmy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bio.psu.edu\/people\/faculty\/langkilde\/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright img-fluid\" style=\"margin: 10px;float: right\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bio.psu.edu\/people\/faculty\/langkilde\/index_files\/image4701.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"209\" height=\"234\"><\/a><span style=\"color: #000000\">Eastern Fence Lizards are rampant across the American southeast but, in recent years, they\u2019ve begun to coexist <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000\">with invasive red fire ants from South America. Because the lizards and the ants have similar <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000\">requirements (terrestrial areas with abundant sunlight), they often find themselves occupying the same space. And the ants don\u2019t like it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">Tracy Langkilde of Penn State University studies the interactions of these territorial animals in Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama. She\u2019s found that fire ants will attack lizards not just when they\u2019re near <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000\">the ants\u2019 territory or their mound, but also when they\u2019re simply wandering by. The opportunistic ants will swarm a lizard, roaming its <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000\">body and stinging it by pulling up the lizard\u2019s spiny scales and stinging the soft skin underneath. Twelve ants can kill a three-inch lizard in under a minute.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right\"><span style=\"color: #000000\"><a href=\"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog-preprod\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/90\/2009\/01\/lizard-on-log.bmp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-186 alignleft img-fluid\" style=\"margin: 10px;float: left\" title=\"lizard-on-log_sm\" src=\"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog-preprod\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/90\/2009\/01\/lizard-on-log_sm.bmp\" alt=\"Eastern fence lizard chilling (actually, basking) on a log\" width=\"300\" height=\"208\"><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">So how do the lizards defend themselves against such ambushes?<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"text-align: right\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">\u201cLizards do pretty much what we would do. They shake the ants off using this big body shimmy, and then they run away from the mound. \u201c<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><a href=\"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog-preprod\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/90\/2009\/01\/measurelimblength.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright img-fluid\" style=\"float: right\" title=\"measurelimblength\" src=\"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/measurelimblength-300x175.jpg\" alt=\"Measuring hindlimb length is Eastern fence lizards\" width=\"300\" height=\"175\"><\/a><span style=\"color: #000000\">Langkilde also found that the longer a population has <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000\">coexisted with the introduced ants, the more common is this behavior. Further, these lizard populations have longer legs than populations that don\u2019t coexist with fire ants, which may improve their shimmy shake and allow them to live another day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"color: #000000\"><strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000\">Langkilde talks about how this adaptation is indicative of rapid evolution in this month\u2019s edition of ESA\u2019s podcast series Field Talk, titled \u201cLizard Evolution and the Ants In Your Pants Dance.\u201d Listen above or on ESA\u2019s <a href=\"www.esa.org\/podcast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">podcast page<\/a>. <\/span><\/strong><br>\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eastern Fence Lizards are rampant across the American southeast but, in recent years, they\u2019ve begun to coexist with invasive red fire ants from South America. Because the lizards and the ants have similar requirements (terrestrial areas with abundant sunlight), they often find themselves occupying the same space. And the ants don\u2019t like it. Tracy Langkilde of Penn State University studies&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2],"tags":[141,102,142,143,144,145],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecology-in-policy","category-research","tag-defense","tag-evolution","tag-fire-ants","tag-lizards","tag-morphology","tag-physiology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}