The female signals that she is receptive by bending her neck when a male approaches, so that he might take a neck hold. When copulation does occur, the male and female will be occupied for 30-60 minutes. Females can store sperm, and should the territorial male disappear and no new male replace him, a female can continue to lay fertile eggs for the rest of the breeding season. She then backs into the depression, lays the egg, and covers the egg with surrounding material. No more parental care is given, and upon hatching 6-8 weeks later, the little neonate is on its own.
Males lose body weight over the course of the breeding season as they defend their harems.
Many males are displaced by other males when exhaustion sets in. Breeding females, on the other hand, can be very inconspicuous. Females also limit their movements to about a fifth that of males. However, after the breeding season, males and females act much alike because males stop patrolling and infrequently display, while tripling their feeding rate to put on weight and energy reserves for the coming winter. On warm days in the winter, aggregations of males and females may emerge to bask, but they rarely feed or interact socially.