Visual displays in agonistic encounters in male Liolaemus salinicola lizards

Visual communication plays a crucial role in lizard social interactions, with behavioral displays and physical traits conveying essential information about individuals’ fighting abilities. Although visual communication has been explored within the genus Liolaemus, the sand-dwelling liolaemid group has received little attention. This study aimed to construct the first ethogram for the sand-dwelling lizard Liolaemus salinicola in experimental agonistic encounters and test the effect of competitors’ body size on the frequency of displays. We conducted experimental visual encounters between males of L. salinicola, pairing each individual with a size-unmatched (asymmetric) and a size-matched (symmetric) opponent. During these interactions, males exhibited 12 behaviors and used four different body postures to perform them. The most frequent behaviors were push-up, head-bob, escape attempt from the arena, tongue-flicking, and inflated throat. Behaviors were mostly performed in intermediate posture, whereas raised postures were present in aggressive and exploratory behaviors and were never used in submissive ones. Although our body size effect results should be interpreted with caution due to the limited sample size and fixed trial order, our findings suggest that asymmetric encounters induce an increase in tongue-flick exploration. Aggressive behaviors remain constant regardless of the encounter type. This study provides the first ethogram of agonistic behaviors in the sand-dwelling liolaemid group, besides emphasizing the significance of constructing detailed ethograms to accurately characterize the behavioral repertoires.