Communal Egg-laying In Reptiles And Amphibians: Evolutionary Patterns And Hypotheses

2009/08/24 by J. Sean Doody, J. Sean Doody, Steve Freedberg +2 · 153 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Environmental Science · #Amphibian and Reptile Biology #Animal Behavior and Reproduction #Biology #Ecology #Evolutionary biology #Fish <Actinopterygii> #Fishery #Nest (protein structural motif) #Offspring #Paternal care #Plant and animal studies #Pregnancy #Proximate and ultimate causation #Taxon #Zoology

paper · open access · doi:10.1086/605078

published in The Quarterly Review of Biology 84(3), 229-252 (University of Chicago Press)

openalex publication_date 2009/08/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Communal egg-laying is widespread among animals, occurring in insects, mollusks, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds, just to name a few. While some benefits of communal egg-laying may be pervasive (e.g., it saves time and energy and may ensure the survival of mothers and their offspring), the remarkable diversity in the life histories of the animals that exhibit this behavior presents a great challenge to discovering any general explanation. Reptiles and amphibians offer ideal systems for investigating communal egg-laying because they generally lack parental care--a simplification that brings nest site choice behavior into sharp focus. We exhaustively reviewed the published literature for data on communal egg-laying in reptiles and amphibians. Our analysis demonstrates that the behavior is much more common than previously recognized (occurring in 481 spp.), especially among lizards (N = 255 spp.), where the behavior has evolved multiple times. Our conceptual review strongly suggests that different forces may be driving the evolution and maintenance of communal egg-laying in different taxa. Using a game theory approach, we demonstrate how a stable equilibrium may occur between solitary and communal layers, thus allowing both strategies to co-exist in some populations, and we discuss factors that may influence these proportions. We conclude by outlining future research directions for determining the proximate and ultimate causes of communal egg-laying.

Citations

• The social behaviour of anuran amphibians
• The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I
• Nesting fidelity and molecular evidence for natal homing in the freshwater turtle,Graptemys kohnii

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