UCLA professor Shane Campbell-Staton was recently interviewed on the science podcast Ologies, hosted by Alie Ward. Shane is a thermophysiologist and anolologist (you may remember the stories about A. carolinensis and the polar vortex on AA a couple of years ago (here, here, and here). That’s not all Shane has going on though; his lab is branching out in lots of different directions (listen to learn about some cool/hot new projects) and he’s also hosting The Biology of Superheroes Podcast. As per usual, Shane’s interview is filled with jaw-dropping factoids (bees that cook their wasp predators), words of wisdom (write tomorrow’s to-do list every night before bed), lots of lizards, and many an endearing anecdote (though we never did find out who wins Superman vs. Ali).
You can listen to the full interview here, or on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Green Fruit Loop, the salad anole of Princeton, NJ
We’ve previously reported on anoles finding their way into commercial produce, with happy and not so happy outcomes. Count this story from Princeton, New Jersey as one of the happy ones…
A kindergartener at Riverside Elementary found this juvenile Anolis carolinensis in a bundle of lettuce that had been stored in the family refrigerator for three days. Although initially listless, the animal recovered quickly and now seems to be doing just fine living with her reptile enthusiast science teacher. The new class pet was named Green Fruit Loop and will hopefully serve as an anole ambassador at Riverside for years to come.
Anolis carolinensis duo with regenerated tails. Photo credit: Joel Robertson.
Readers of this blog are well aware of autotomy in lizards – self-amputation of the tail – that usually occurs as a result of sub-lethal predation. Readers of this blog are also familiar with the fascinating ability of many lizards to regenerate new tails post-autotomy. Lizards are the closest relatives to humans that can regenerate a fully functional appendage in the adult stage, and understanding the molecular basis of this process can shed light on the latent regenerative capacities in mammals. A new paper published this week in PLOS ONE (Hutchins et al. 2014) provides the first insights into the genetic mechanisms of lizard tail regeneration, using Anolis carolinensis as a model. Via the high-throughput sequencing of RNA from regenerating green anole tails, and the mapping of these sequences to the A. carolinensis genome, the authors describe the genes that are expressed during the regeneration process, shedding light on potential targets for future human therapies.
Disclaimer: I am not an author on the paper, although I do work in the Kusumi Lab with the authors.
While the ability to regenerate a fully functional appendage in the adult phase is likely a deeply homologous trait across animals, it is not uniformly conserved across vertebrates. Fish, as in the zebrafish model (Gemberling et al. 2013), and amphibians, as in the salamander models (Knapp et al. 2013) can regenerate both limbs and tails, suggesting that while the ancestral vertebrate was equipped with this ability, it seems mammals have during their evolution somehow lost it. Evolutionary hypotheses explaining exactly why some taxa lose the ability to regenerate adult appendages are far and wide, ranging from the stochastic to ecologically-specific fitness trade-offs (reviewed in Bely and Nyberg 2010).
But what are the proximate (i.e. genetic) reasons as to why lizards remain strong regenerators while mammals are left holding the short end of the regeneration stick?
During the last five years, herpetologists at the Museo de Zoología QCAZ, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (PUCE), have discovered and described 35 new species of amphibians and reptiles, some of which are anoles. BBC news recently posted a photographic article on this work, which was funded by the Ecuadorian government and PUCE. Anolis otongae and A. podocarpus are some of the recently discovered species featured in that article.
The Museo de Zoología QCAZ also maintains ReptiliaWebEcuador, a website on Ecuadorian reptiles with tons of information in Spanish, including pictures, maps, free downloads, and more. Visit us if you want to know more about Ecuadorian anoles.
Research that is revealing the surprising cognitive abilities of reptiles is featured in the Science Timesin tomorrow’s (Nov. 19) New York Times. And not surprising to AA readers, the work of Manuel Leal on the problem-solving ability of Anolis evermanni is prominently reviewed, a topic we have discussed several times in these pages [1,2]. The article contains a nice discussion of Leal’s work, as well as several photographs and a brief appearance (of lizard, not Leal) in the accompanying video (fast forward to the 2:20 mark).
The article also discusses research on tortoises showing they can work their way through mazes, using several different approaches, to find food, and on monitor lizards that can figure out how to open a door on a tube to access mice within.
If you work on Anolis lizards, there’s a good chance you’ve been asked about the recent rediscovery of the long-thought-to-be-extinct “Pinocchio Anole” within the last week. As Anole Annalsreported on October 7, this story has hit the big time. After being featured on the Huffington Post, the tale of this rediscovery went viral, receiving extensive news coverage worldwide.
The catch, as most Anole Annals readers are doubtless aware, is that the Pinocchio Anole wasn’t just recently rediscovered. It was rediscovered in 2005, and has since been the subject of field studies resulting in no fewer than five published works (six if you count “Finding Anolis proboscis,” Steve Poe’s 2010 Anolis Newsletter article about finding Anolis proboscis).
What gives? How can the central claim of such a major scientific news item be fundamentally incorrect?
I propose the following hypothesis: This story evolved to its current state by good old-fashioned natural selection. I think that an initially accurate web story was repeatedly and imperfectly replicated, and that as the story was picked up by increasingly larger news outlets, important details were lost or altered during transcription (perhaps selectively, since discovery makes good copy), resulting in the evolution of an incorrect news item.
If I have things right (it’s possible I don’t know all the details), the story started with an informational advertisement from the ecotourism company Destination Ecuador.
If you read that article, it’s pretty accurate with the potential exception of a single use of the word “re-discovery” to describe the event during which the Tropical Herping team found Anolis proboscis. The use of that word is admittedly a little strange and perhaps a bit unwise, but the article makes it very clear that the actual rediscovery of the species took place in 2005, and describes a successful scientific expedition to study the species in the wild in 2010. To me the point of this article is “with our ecotourism company, you can have a chance to travel with experts to see a weird, rare, recently-rediscovered lizard species.”
Next comes an article by Douglas Main on livescience.com, which appears to be the original source of the viral news item. If you read the LiveScience article, it’s worded in a way that tells a narrative of very recent rediscovery (which is not really true) without ever explicitly stating it.
Ray Huey and friends at last year’s World Herpetological Congress in Vancouver
Learn about Ray’s storied past.
Ray Huey has been a pioneer in the field of physiological ecology and evolution. Building on the work of Ruibal, Rand,Williams and others (as he always stresses), Ray was instrumental in making anoles a model for understanding thermal biology, integrating behavior, physiology, evolution and, most recently, conservation biology. And then there’s Ray’s other side. Who else could get away with using a Rolling Stone‘s album in the title of a paper?
A symposium in Ray’s honor will be held in Seattle on Friday, October 4th and is open to anyone, but attendance is limited, so register today. All the details are available on the fest’s website. Whether you attend or not, check out the Hueyblog and add your own tributes and reminiscences.
David Wake knew Ken Miyata, too, and here’s what he had to say: “Ken did an undergraduate honor’s thesis with me in MVZ. He was far ahead of his time — we had no digital database but he wanted to do detailed mapping of some species so he selected Batrachoseps attenuatus and then laboriously went through the large MVZ collection. He made a pin for each locality and on the pin recorded the MVZ catalogue number (or first in a series in the case of multiple specimens). Then he researched the exact locality, often going to field notes. The result is still on the wall outside my office! From time to time someone suggests taking it down, but it has now gained the status of historical document! And it is a constant reminder to me of Ken and his enthusiasms and diligence.”
La Jornada en Lineajust published an article on a new Mexican amber anole with information provided by paleontologist Francisco Riquelme. As discussed previously in AA‘s pages, this is only the second anole in amber from anywhere other than the Dominican Republic, the first, Anolis electrum, having been described by Skip Lazell in 1965. That specimen is very incomplete such that little can be said about its taxonomy or lifestyle. It will be interesting to learn more about this one.
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