Dr While, of the University of Tasmania, is one of 874 herpetologists — specialists in amphibians and reptiles — attending the 9th World Congress of Herpetology in Dunedin this week.
He will today speak on ‘‘the evolutionary ecology of family-living in lizards’’.
Understanding key factors behind the evolutionary origins of family life on Earth had been a major challenge for biologists, he said.
Family life in mammals, including humans, had a more complex evolutionary history, but studying some lizards did provide important insights.
‘‘It offers us a window into what early family life may have been like.’’
Tensions and conflicts of human family life have long been depicted in television soap operas but
plenty of such behaviour could also be seen among lizard families, including sibling rivalries, infidelities, squabbles involving parents and between fathers and offspring, he said.
A striking feature of a unique group of Australian lizards, the Egernia group, was that it included ‘‘highly social lizards that form stable family groups’’.
One species in this group was White’s skink, which was found in Tasmania, southern parts of Australia and Queensland.
The young were developed within the adult.
Within the group some males and females formed long-term pair-bonds, sometimes holding territories where juveniles could remain with their parents.
In the case of Cunningham’s skink, in southeast Australia, this could lead to large communal groups of up to 30 related individuals, including adults who stayed within their parents’ social group, he said.
