CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Morphology can be associated with different aspects of an organisms? life and thesize of sensorial organs may allow inferences on the relevance of sensorial systemsemployed by them. There are organs implied in signal detection (sensory organs)and production (emitting organs) that are linked frequently to behaviour. Lizardsare mostly dependent on the chemosensory system, where the vomeronasal organ(VNO) detects chemical scents delivered by the tongue from glands. The VNO,tongue flicks and glands, should be associated under a morpho-functional paradigm,and our main aim is to explore whether there is an association among these threechemosensory components in Liolaemus lizards. Additionally, tongue flicks havebeen used to evaluate the interaction between the chemical and visual sensory systems,showing a positive association. Hence, considering the close associationbetween morphology and behaviour, our second aim is to explore whether the morphological(VNO, glands) and behavioural (tongue flicks) chemosensory componentsare correlated with eye size. We studied the rate of tongue flicks exhibitedunder two conditions, own scents and control, in 13 Liolaemus species and measuredtheir head length, snout volume (VNO proxy), eye surface, and counted theirnumber of precloacal glands. The rate of tongue flicks correlated positively withthe residuals to head of snout volume and negatively with the number of precloacalglands, suggesting that they are associated and that this behaviour links both structures.In addition, residuals of snout volume and the rate of tongue flicks were positivelyassociated with the residuals of eye surface, suggesting that chemical andvisual sensory modalities would have co-evolved in these Liolaemus species. Ourresults show the importance of morphology and behaviour to infer the relevance ofanimals? sensory systems.

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