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Many ecological attributes of organisms vary spatially. This strict dependency upon space generally arises by individuals occupying places with the necessary resources and conditions for survival. For lizards, losing the tail is an evolved mechanism that allows them to escape predators or to avoid aggressive intraspecific agonistic interactions. We evaluated the spatial relation of tail loss in a population of the lizard Tropidurus montanus. Our results support the occurrence of a spatial cluster of autotomized lizards. However, we cannot relate the cluster formation to the crowding of neighbouring lizards nor to individuals’ body size. Tail loss in lizards is known to be related to predatory attacks or intraspecific aggression, and we now show that tail autotomy occurs in a non-random way regarding space, and thus is also related to the space occupied by individuals in populations.

In many species, the shape, size, and location of home ranges depend on the spatial positioning of resources. Therefore, evaluating the resources and conditions related to the space use of individuals can provide crucial information on the species´ ecology and sociobiology. In this study, we evaluated factors shaping the use of space by the lizard Tropidurus montanus (Rodrigues, 1987) and assessed how the distribution of resources can affect the size of the home range and how the quality of the male's home range can influence the number of associated females. We hypothesized that: (i) males with a larger body size would have a higher quality home range, and (ii) there would be a positive relationship between the home range size and home range quality of males and the number of associated females. Our results suggest that males, females, and juveniles adopt different strategies. While females and juveniles have relatively small home ranges located in more suitable locations, males invest in larger home ranges, including in lower-quality habitat patches. Our results suggest that males increase their home ranges to incorporate resources females prefer, enlarging the number of females in their harems.