Location of fruit using only airborne odor cues by a lizard

Although squamate reptiles are known to locate conspecifics by scent-trailing and to locate and identify prey by tongue-flicking substrates, an ability to locate food using only airborne cues has previously only been suspected based on observations that dead animals can be used as bait for Komodo dragons and that some nocturnal geckos aggregate on flowers. We conducted a simple field test of the ability of the omnivorous lizard Podarcis lilfordi to find fruit hidden under opaque cups. When a board having two identical cups spaced 1 m apart, one empty and the other hiding a freshly cut piece of apricot, was placed in the habitat, lizards first contacted the cup hiding fruit at well above chance frequency. Upon contact with a cup, lizards were significantly more likely to stay next to the cup, tongue-flick at high rates, climb the cup, and attempt to bite the cup if it hid a piece of apricot. The ability to follow a concentration gradient of airborne volatile chemicals to its source is very likely mediated by olfaction, but participation by or primacy of vomerolfaction cannot be excluded.