Intimate Iguanas: social opportunities and mate preference improve breeding success in Caribbean iguanas

Effects of socialization on reproductive success and breeding behavior
All analyses were performed using R studio (2022) using R version 4.0.1 GUI 1.72 Catalina. To evaluate whether socialization affected reproductive performance, we used the lme4 package in (Bates et al. 2015). We ran GLMMs to examine the relationship between our socialization explanatory variable (Howdy Door 1,0) and the reproductive performance variables Intromission Success, Average Number of Copulations, Average Copulation Time, Egg Production, and Average Number of Eggs. Socialization information for the focal pairing was matched to the reproductive success and breeding season mate introductions behavior data collected for that same year. We included male ID and female ID as random factors to account for repeated animals across years and variation in reproductive success across animals. Guassian regression was used for the Number of Copulations, Average Number of Copulations, and Average Copulation Time. A poisson distribution was used for Average Number of Eggs. Logistic regression with a logit-link function was used for intromission success and egg production.
Effects of mate preference on reproductive success and breeding behavior
To evaluate whether mate preference affected reproductive performance, we used the lme4 package in R (Bates et al. 2015). We ran GLMMs to examine the relationship between both the male and female preference explanatory variable (Preference 1,0) and the mutual mate preference explanatory variable (Preferred, Mixed, Nonpreferred) versus the reproductive performance variables Intromission Success, Average Number of Copulations, Average Copulation Time, Egg Production, and Average Number of Eggs. Preference information for the focal pairing was matched to the reproductive success and breeding season mate introductions behavior data collected for that same year. We included male ID and female ID as random factors to account for repeated animals across years and variation in reproductive success across animals. Guassian regression was used for the Number of Copulations, Average Number of Copulations, and Average Copulation Time. A poisson distribution was used for Average Number of Eggs. Logistic regression with a logit-link function was used for intromission success and egg production.
Similar to our analyses on socialization, we used the summed frequency behavioral categories: Social Display, Olfactory Communication, Feed, Basking, and Resting. We also evaluated the individual behavior Proximity. Behavioral data was subsetted to the breeding season during mate introductions as we were most interested in determining how socialization affected breeding behaviors during mate introductions. We ran GLMMs assuming a negative distribution using the glm.nb function from the MASS package (Venables & Ripley 2002) to examine the relationship between mate preference designations and our summed behaviors from the breeding season.