CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Understanding pre- and postcopulatory mechanisms of sexual selection can provide insights into the evolution of male reproductive strategies. The phenotype-linked fertility hypothesis postulates that male sperm quality and male ornament will positively covary, whereas the sperm competition hypothesis predicts a negative association between investment in sperm quality and male ornamentation. Male reproductive traits often show variation throughout the breeding season, suggesting that the relationship between pre and postcopulatory sexual selection may vary seasonally. We evaluate the relationship between sexual secondary characters and sperm traits and the seasonal variation of reproductive strategies in Lizard. We observed a negative relationship between jaw muscle and flagellum length, with differences in flagellum length between males with different inversion in muscle mass. We also detected temporal variation in the relationship between pre and postcopulatory traits. Here, we showed evidences of trade-off between pre and postcopulatory sexual selection for first time in Squamata, and we highlight that male reproductive strategies are not fixed in Tupinambis rufescens.