Tail autotomy affects bipedalism but not sprint performance in a cursorial Mediterranean lizard

摘要: Running is essential in all terrestrial animals mainly for finding food and mates escaping from predators. Lizards employ running their everyday functions, among which defense stands out. Besides flight, tail autotomy another very common antipredatory strategy within most lizard families. The impact of loss to sprint performance seems be species dependent. In some species, shedding reduces speed, other increases it, and, a few speed not affected at all. Here, we aimed clarify the effect on cursorial with particular adaptations running, such as bipedalism spike-like protruding scales (fringes) toepads that allow high sandy substrates. We hypothesized individuals performed bipedalism, have more larger fringes, would achieve higher performance. also anticipated affect (though were able define what way because unpredictable effects has different species). According our results, ran bipedally faster; limb length fringe size had limited whereas quadrupedal only females. Nonetheless, significantly bipedalism: ability hindlimbs was completely lost adult 72.3% juveniles.