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(23125)

I have been observing the Garden Lizards this month and have seen that most of the males have turned various shades of red on the upper parts of their bodies. I do know that these male reptiles do so during mating season.
This fellow was bright red when I shot its first picture. Then, as I took more shots by changing camera settings, it started getting lighter and lighter and by the time I had finished my 6th shot, it was almost back to its original dull geyish brown colour (See WORKSHOP). The process took about 2 minutes. I am not a scientist, so I cannot explain the phenomenon and only report it here.
BTW, it had noticed me taking its pictures, but kept its position on the tree trunk; Garden Lizards are not bothered by close human presence unless the changing colours of this fellow expressed his annoyance with me :-).
This is the third shot in the sequence; the first one when it was bright red did not turn out to be that good.
Here is an interesting article on female lizard behaviour in response to male mating colours:

Female lizards desire males of many colours

Vive la difference – between men. That's the attitude of the female painted dragon lizard, which lives across the southern states of Australia.

The females are polyandrous, and mate with as many males as possible. That is easy, because they only need to copulate for 10 seconds before males ejaculate.

What is more, they store ejaculates inside their reproductive tracts for up to five months, forcing sperm from different males to compete to fertilise their eggs.

Evolutionarily speaking, this all makes good sense. By encouraging competition the female increases her chances of getting hold of good-quality sperm.

What has been a mystery is the fact that the brightly-coloured male dragons come in more than one version: some have red heads, some yellow heads, and a third version – discovered last year – have orange heads.

Spice of life
Usually natural selection weans out inferior versions of an organism, so the fact that all versions of male painted dragons exist in the population has been hard to explain.

Now a team of evolutionary ecologists believe that they have solved a major piece of the puzzle.

They think female dragons deliberately choose to mate with males with different coloured heads, perhaps as a means of ensuring they are not mating with the same male twice. That in turn helps ensure that the different head colours persist.

"Given the choice, they go for variety," says Mo Healey of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, who led the study. "This is the major selective pressure driving and maintaining the trait."

Feisty red-heads
Healey points out, however, that the female preference for variety isn't the only driving force. "The males also use head colour to assess each other's willingness to fight," she says. Red heads are better fighters.

In the study, female lizards were allowed to approach male lizards in Perspex-sided cages. Given the option of either a single red-headed male or a single yellow-headed one, eight females choose yellow and 10 choose red, a difference that is not significant.

Then 76 females were allowed to approach two pairs of males, one pair with the same, the other with different coloured heads. Two thirds of the females chose the pair with different coloured heads.

"It's yet another demonstration that these little creatures with brains much smaller than a pea are taking in information about who is who, and using it to make extraordinarily subtle reproductive decisions about who to pursue to enhance fitness," says zoologist Rick Shine of the University of Sydney.

Male hunt
Healey and her colleagues also found that females that mated with multiple males hatched 12% more of their eggs than those who only mated with one male. In other words, multiple mating improves reproductive success.

But there is a danger to females who mate with lots of males. When the researchers released lizards back into the bush, 20% of females released with males of one colour were recaptured over 13 weeks, compared to only 7% of females released with a mixture of red- and yellow-headed males.

"They travel around more going to males, and time away from the burrow is dangerous," says Healey.

Source:http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13774-female-lizards-desire-males-of-many-colours.html

TFL

Altered Image #4

ramthakur

(23125)
Adobe Photoshop CS2
Edited by:loot

(8699)

Hi Ram

As I said, this is just a slight different viewpoint for the fun of it. I flipped it around horizontally and angled it at 45 degrees. Then I cropped it to adapt to the new format, removed the OE on the branch with some selective cloning and added a bit of saturation, USM, and contrast.

Obviously I ended up with a much smaller photo than your original posting (±50%) which I had to enlarge again, but it actually stood well. After the processing I chose "Save for Web" and increased the quality slider to 286kB.

As I said, it is just another view of your fine photo and I hope you like the optimisation done.

Best regards
Loot

Altered Image #3

ramthakur

(23125)
Several cs3
Edited by:pvs

(10803)

Hi Ram,

I think the color change as descibed in your note could as well be the result due to the cameras light measurement,I did a slight ws in CS3 (on your picture posted in the ws and get almost the sme colors (as well on treebark and BG are changed in about same colors as your original),if the Lizard itself would have changed color I guess the BG and tree would have been the same as in the original.

Regards,
Paul

Altered Image #2

ramthakur

(23125)
ps-cs3
Edited by:eng55

(1095)

Hi Ram,
1-This is an another look and hope you'll like it.
I cropped about 1/3 from left part.
2-I increased contrast +15
3-I used USM 300-0.2-2 at PS

Altered Image #1

ramthakur

(23125)
Changing Colours
Edited by:ramthakur

(23125)

This is how the male Lizard reverted to its almost original colour.

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