Include the females: morphology-performance relationships vary between sexes in lizards

An animal’s morphology influences its ability to perform essential tasks, such as locomoting to obtain prey or escape predators. While morphology–performance relationships are well-studied in lizards, most conclusions have been based only on male study subjects, leaving unanswered questions about females. Sex-specific differences are important to understand because females carry the bulk of the physiological demands of reproduction. Consequently, their health and survival can determine the fate of the population as a whole. To address this knowledge gap, we sampled introduced populations of common wall lizards (Podarcis muralis) in Ohio, USA. We measured a complete suite of limb and body dimensions of both males and females, and we measured sprint speeds while following straight and curved paths on different substrates. Using a multivariate statistical approach, we identified that body dimensions relative to snout-to-vent length in males were much larger compared with females and that b..., , , # Data from: Include the females: morphology-performance relationships vary between sexes in lizards

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xgxd254r7](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xgxd254r7)

## Description of the data and file structure

Data description for data file associated with Head et al. 2024

\"Include the females: morphology-performance relationships vary between sexes in lizards\"

### Files and variables

#### File: Headetal\_Podarcis\_AdditionalSprintData.csv

**Description:** Provides measured maximum speed of each lizard at an additional time point

##### Variables

* Date: date the sprint test was performed
* ID: identification number of each lizard
* Sex: sex of the lizard (M/F)
* Substrate: type of substrate on which performance was measured (all on Turf)
* Obstacle: presence or absence of an obstacle on each trial (No_Obstacle or Yes_Obstacle)
* AirTemp: the temperature of the air at the time the run took place (°C)
* Run: refers to the trial number for each lizard
* Tb_star...