Das Leben in einer Stadt macht die gemeinsame Mauer Echsen (Podarcis muralis) sozialer und zeigt einen Einfluss der Verstädterung auf das Tierverhalten | City Eidechsen sind sozialer

Highlights from the article:

>A new study published in Biology Letters examined the contrasting social behaviors of urban lizards and non-urban lizards, showing how a species can adopt a trusting temperament in urban spaces. Thanks to the layout of urban infrastructure, city lizards have to get used to crossing paths with each other often. It turns out that this does wonders for their social skills, forcing them to be more tolerant than their countryside counterparts.
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>In the study, the researchers observed populations of common wall lizards in the Croatian city of Rovinj and in a park 3 kilometers (about 2 miles) away. They marked the lizards with cloth tape that could come off after shedding and observed their interactions over 21 days, watching for social “associations,” which they define as times when lizards were observed within 2 meters (~ 6 feet) of each other.
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>The researchers then created social networks to map the relationships between lizards. With this method, they found that in urban habitats, common wall lizards built more connections, stayed in closer contact, and were observed in groups more frequently.
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>The researchers believe this social behavior has likely been shaped by the structure of city environments. Since cities usually have smaller, isolated habitat patches due to infrastructure, the lizards tend to inhabit the same spaces together. The researchers say that unevenly distributed resources like food and sunny spots for basking also push the lizards closer together, forcing them to be more tolerant than they would be in natural habitats.

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Research link: [City lizards are more social](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2025.0326)

Abstract:

>Cities are expanding globally, exposing animals to novel ecological conditions that can alter the frequency and nature of their social interactions. Urban habitat features, such as built infrastructure and patchy resource distributions, can constrain movement and promote aggregation, potentially increasing encounters among conspecifics and introducing unique social challenges. Understanding how urbanization affects social behaviour is therefore crucial. However, these effects remain poorly understood, and studies on solitary or non-gregarious species are particularly scarce. Here, we investigate how urbanization influences social behaviour in the common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis), a territorial species and successful urban dweller. We constructed social networks using proximity-based association data from urban and non-urban lizard populations. Urban lizards had more social connections, stronger associations and were observed in more associations overall. These differences were not explained by variation in population density. We propose that spatial constraints and resource heterogeneity in urban habitats may enhance social tolerance. Our results reveal that urbanization can reshape social behaviour even in less gregarious species and suggest that shifts in social strategies may facilitate persistence in urban landscapes.