Divergence in locomotor performance, ecology, and morphology between two sympatric sister species of desert-dwelling gecko
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The functional and evolutionary implications of morphological diversification have been addressed for several groups of vertebrates. Although the mechanisms of gecko adhesion have received considerable attention, little is known regarding locomotor performance of geckos in nature, and how this might relate to morphological diversity. In this study we examine locomotor performance of two sympatric sister species of geckos of the genus Rhoptropus (Rhoptropus afer and Rhoptropus bradfieldi) found in the coastal desert regions of Namibia. One species (R. afer) commonly runs on sandy substrates and moves between isolated rock sheets, whereas the other species (R. bradfieldi) commonly lives and runs on isolated boulders. The morphology of R. afer is extremely divergent from its sister species and all other species in the genus. We initially recorded the inclination of the substrate in which the lizards were found in order to characterize the habitat of each species. We then quantified maximum speed and acceleration on a level 1-m trackway, and also during escapes in the field. We found that R. bradfieldi occupies steeper surfaces than those occupied by R. afer. On the trackway and in nature, R. afer runs faster than R. bradfieldi, although the differences in locomotor performance between the species are greater for the field measurements. Rhoptropus afer commonly runs for more than 2 or 3 m, whereas R. bradfieldi commonly runs less than 50 cm during an escape sprint. Our main conclusions are that: (1) R. afer attains higher maximum speeds when escaping under controlled and field conditions, although the magnitude differs between conditions; and (2) hindlimb morphology correlates with maximum running speed in R. afer, but not in R. bradfieldi. Similar to the well-studied Anolis lizards, we propose that these two gecko species represent distinct and highly divergent ecomorphs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".