Hello all,
Ben Marshall and my colleagues at the Reptile Database have recently tried to take stock of the reptile photos on some of the most prominent web sites
Anolis porcatus, female, near Matanzas, Cuba – a close relative of the most photographed Anolis ever, A. carolinensis.
that collect nature photos, namely, iNaturalist, Flickr, CalPhotos, HerpMapper, Wikimedia, and the Reptile Database itself. We came up with more than 1 million reptile photos, the vast majority being on iNat. While the Reptile Database has much fewer photos overall, we do have photos of close to 6000 reptile species (with iNat having about 6500 species). While about 8000 reptile species have photos on these sites, almost 2000 have photos in only one of them (see Marshall et al. 2020 for details).
That begs the question “how do anoles fit into that picture?” — literally. Of the 436 species of anoles that the Reptile Database currently lists, at least 367 have photos on some of these websites, again with iNat leading (302 species), and all the others trailing far behind with Flickr (177), the Reptile Database (173), Calphotos (101), Herpmapper (92), and Wikimedia (55). Not surprisingly, both Anolis carolinensis and A. sagrei are among the top-10 most photographed reptiles with about 30,000 photos each on iNaturalist alone! By contrast, there are at least 67 species of anole of which there seem to be no photos on any of these sites (and possibly nowhere else on the internet). Here is the list: Anolis_Photos (Excel spreadsheet).
As pointed out in our paper, photos are not just nice to look at, they do carry a substantial amount of information, as all anologists doubtlessly know: besides morphology, you can see behavior, diet, ecological adaptations, habitats, and many other things on a photo (or video).
That said, at the Reptile Database, we are increasingly moving towards standardized photos of reptile species, ideally showing diagnostic characters. To see what I am talking about, take a look at Levi Gray’s excellent dewlap panels that he has presented here at Anole Annals and in his blog. Similarly, over the past year or two, I have taken pictures of more than 1000 reptile specimens in various collections (mostly NOT of anoles, admittedly), mainly to document such characters. They will go into the Reptile Database over the coming year (or probably years). Below are two examples, Anolis reconditus from Jamaica, and A. carolinensis from the Bahamas.
Anolis reconditus, CMNAR 9931, from Jamaica. Note the keeled scales which are not visible on any of the photos on iNaturalist.
Anolis carolinensis, ZMB 18723, Nassau, Bahamas. Compare to A. reconditus.
Obviously, it would be better if we had photos like these of all anoles — or all reptiles for that matter. Well, we have to start somewhere. In addition to the >18,000 photos in the Reptile Database, we need many more to document morphological diversity. Again, one idea is to use these photos to extract information such as character data. So, if you happen to have photos of any of those undocumented (or under-documented) species, please consider sending them to photos@reptile-database.org — or to one of the other sites, of course. Thanks!
Spoiler warning: May be A. cybotes, but maybe not…