Chemical Discrimination in Liolaemus Lizards: Comparison of Behavioral and Chemical Data

Chemical signals produced by lizards are involved in different aspects of their interactions at intra and interspecific levels, including sex recognition, territory marking, and individual self-recognition (Mason, 1992; Cooper, 1994;Font, 1996), and have also been proposed as pre-reproductive barriers for sympatric congeneric species (Cooper and Vitt, 1986). The range of functions of chemical recognition would suggest that lizards should be able to discriminate many different patterns of chemical signals. We postulate that it would be “more economical” for lizards to discriminate only one chemical signal pattern, the one used by individuals in their self-recognition, and that signals not matching with the basic chemical pattern will not be discriminated.