Early exposure to androgens affects adult expression of alternative male types in tree lizards

Males of many species exhibit strongly dimorphic reproductive behavior and morphology associated with alternative reproductive tactics. Little is known about the physiological control of these individual differences. The relative plasticity hypothesis proposes that such within-sex differences arise from either organizational or activational actions of sex steroid hormones depending on whether adults can switch tactics or not. This hypothesis predicts that differences between individuals in a species where adults cannot switch between tactics (are "fixed") should be organized by early actions of hormones. Three experiments explored the possible organizational role of testosterone (T) on the development of male alternatives in the tree lizard (Urosaurus ornatus), which has two fixed male morphs. Orange (O) males have a mostly orange throat fan (dewlap), are nonterritorial nomads, and are larger than orange-blue (OB) males which have an orange dewlap with a central blue patch and are territorial. In the first experiment intact males on the day of hatching were (1) sham-operated and implanted with empty capsules, (2) castrated, or (3) testosterone-implanted. As adults, the castration group had more O males than the control and the T-implanted group had more OB males than the control. Adult body size in castrated and T-implanted groups parallelled naturally occurring morph differences, but both were smaller than controls. A second experiment with a lower dose yielded similar results for dewlap type and growth. In a third experiment, intact males were given an empty capsule or a T-implant at 30 days posthatching. Again, the frequency of OB males in the T-implanted group was significantly greater than that in the empty implant group, indicating that either the critical period extends past Day 30 or there is no well-defined critical period. Together, these results support the hypothesis that the organizational action of T or one of its metabolites contributes to the differentiation of these within-sex differences.