Behavioral and hormonal correlates of alternative reproductive strategies in a polygynous lizard: Tests of the relative plasticity and challenge hypotheses

Species with alternative reproductive tacts are good models to investigate the poorly understood question of whether individual variation within sexes results from the same physiological mechanisms that control variation between sexes. We have shown previously that adult male tree lizards, Urosaurus ornatus, of different throat color morphs express different levels of aggression in the laboratory. Further field results support the suggestion that the two morphs practice alternative reproductive tactics because the two morphs express different levels of aggressive behavior under field conditions and exhibit dramatic and opposite responses to aggressive challenges. However, despite these behavioral differences, the two morphs do not differ in levels of testosterone or corticosterone either in undisturbed situations or following aggressive challenge. These results are consistent with the relative plasticity hypothesis which proposes that organizational, rather than activational, actions of steroid hormones will be more important in morph differentiation when morphs are fixed in adult life, as they are in tree lizards. These results also support the hypothesis that steroid hormonal levels are insensitive to social modulation in males of species such as U. ornatus without paternal care.