Lizards and rock-paper-scissors

[nancylebov]

biology gets complicated

An unusual game is being played out in the Coast Range of California. Three alternative male strategies are locked in an ecological "perpetual motion machine" from which there appears little escape. As in the rock-paper-scissors game where rock beats scissors, paper beats rock, and scissors beats paper, three morphs of lizards cycle from the ultra-dominant polygynous orange-throated males, which best the more monogamous mate gaurding blues; the oranges are in turn bested by the sneaker strategy of yellow-throated males, and the sneaker strategy of yellows is in turn bested by the mate guarding strategy of blue-throated males. Each strategy in this game has a strength and a weakness, and there is the evolutionary rub that keeps the wheels spinning.

The description seems to view the cycle as a problem ("little escape"), but I can't see that it's inferior to species with a stable male strategy. The most obvious thing that could destabilize it would be oranges developing the ability to identify yellows as males.

Comments

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Hey, thanks for posting this one - I love reading about this kind of evoluntionary arms race, and I hadn't run across this beautiful example before.

[cellio]

I don't see that as a problem either. It's stable, after all.

[zenlizard]

Whta's complex about this? Dynamic equilibrium. Happens all the time.

[lightningb.livejournal.com]

I think the thing that's different is that this is within one species. Most dynamic equalibrium situations involve multiple species.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I think the unusual complexity is that it's three-strategy system. It's simple enough to be comprehensible, but more complex than the usual predator-prey systems or the balance of male and female births.

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

There are some fish who have sneaker males and dominant males, but this is a bit more complicated than that. I'm also aware of a species of killie that is mostly self-cloning females but with some production of males and females that create new lines of self-cloning females, if I've remembered what Bruce Turner at Virginia Tech told me.