Anolis Flickr Pool – Anolis Decorus

Posted on November 17, 2011 by geneva

the altercation by Flickr user Dixie Native

I recently stumbled across a Flickr pool dedicated to beautiful images of anoles – Anolis Decorus.  From the pool’s description:

Photographs of anole lizards. This group is open to all, but a very high standard will be maintained so please submit only your best photographs. No photographs of dead or dying lizards please. The emphasis of the photograph should be on the lizard (ergo: please post photographs of Anole lizards, not photographs with lizards in them).

Some AA bloggers (and I assume readers) have contributed images. The pool includes a diverse array of Anolis species and includes some stunning photography. The picture above is yet another example of carolinensis/sagrei encounters like that posted previously here.  Overall there are some really high quality images, check them out.

Posted in Anole Art, Literature, and Humor | 2 Comments

Digital Images of Old Anolis Prints Available

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Jonathan Losos

 

And here’ s more information on these classic prints. The webpage of the NYPL Digital Gallery proclaims that it “is The New York Public Library’s image database, developed to provide free and open online access to hundreds of thousands of images from the original and rare holdings of The Library. Spanning a wide range of historical eras, geography, and visual media, NYPL Digital Gallery offers digital images of drawings, illuminated manuscripts, maps, photographs, posters, prints, rare illustrated books, and more. Encompassing the subject strengths of the vast collections of The Library, these materials represent the applied sciences, fine and decorative arts, history, performing arts, and social sciences.”

Most importantly, of course, these holdings include classic paintings of anoles, including those by Catesby and others. For example, searching using the term “Anolis” yields 12 paintings, including those of A. carolinensis, A. cuvieri, A. sagrei and others. Be forewarned that they are categorized by the name used in their original source. Holbrook’s drawings from North American Herpetology were just added (thanks to CNAH for bringing this to AA’s attention), but our beloved North American green is categorized as Anolius carolinensis.

And for those of you who’ve already begun your holiday shopping, prints of these images are available at a reasonable cost.

Posted in Anole Art, Literature, and Humor | 4 Comments

Get Your Own Copy of a Classic Anole Illustration

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Rich Glor

When its not trying to kill off distinguished herpetologists, the Center for North American Herpetology’s (CNAH‘s) mailing list is a great way to keep abreast of all kinds of herp related news.  Today, the CNAH’s list called attention to the fact that the New York Public Library is selling reproductions of classic prints from Holbrook‘s North American Herpetology.   Included among Holbrook’s plates is a rendering of Anolius Carolinensis that would look excellent on any good anolologist’s wall!  The prints being offered by the NY Public Library appear to be from the second edition published in 1842.  I’m not sure if the same print appeared in the first edition, or even which volume the anole was originally in; Holbrook famously recalled and burned many copies of the first edition in a bonfire at his house due to problems with the plates and with the organization of species accounts.   It looks like an 8 x 10″ Anolius Carolinensis print will set you back around $35.  Alternatively, you could get a facsimile of the whole edition for $70 from the SSAR!

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Amazing Research Opportunity for Young Anole Aficionados

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Rich Glor

Anolis smaragdinus is one of the species that participants in Bob Powell's REU program are likely to encounter on their trip to Eleuthera this Summer. Photo by Jonathan Losos

Are you an undergraduate student with dreams of traveling to the Caribbean to study lizards?  If so, your dream could be realized through the NSF-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program organized by Bob Powell at Avila University.  Now in its 10th iteration, Bob’s program has provided nearly 100 students with opportunities to conduct research in places like the Dominican Republic, Anguilla, Grenada, St. Eustatius, St. Vincent, Dominica and the Grenadines.  I can tell you from personal experience – I was a participant in 1995 – that Bob’s program is among the best of its kind.  Students in Bob’s REU get a complete research experience, from personal instruction on how to find and read the primary literature to supervised preparation of research for publication.  Just about everyone who participates in Bob’s program comes out with one or more publications.  This summer’s REU will involve field work on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera, which is home to four species of anoles!  Applications are due by February 15th.

Posted in Anoles and Anolologists in the News, Education and Anoles | 1 Comment

Anoles in the New York Times

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Jonathan Losos

Caption: "Flora and fauna abound."

The Travel section of the NYT recently featured Caribbean getaways and, of course, anoles were a criteria for choosing which destinations to feature. This isn’t a tough one, but can anyone identify this agave-loving anole?

Posted in Anoles and Anolologists in the News | 2 Comments

More on Anoles Playing Dead, and a Lizard That Loves Watermelon

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Jonathan Losos

In response to recent discussion of dead-playing anoles, AA‘s French connection Ludovic recently brought to our attention a video of an A. coelestinus doing the same, while floating in a sink.

And as an extra treat, Youtube then directed the alert viewer to a bonus track of what appears to be a fuzzy A. stratulus going to town on a slice of watermelon.

Posted in Natural History Observations | 3 Comments

Evolution of a Lizard Room, Part IV: Crickets

Posted on November 12, 2011 by Julienne Ng

Left: Tubs used to house crickets. Right: The set up inside a cricket tub.

To continue our series on lab anole husbandry, let’s talk food! We feed our room full of hungry anoles Acheta crickets ordered from Fluker Farms. We house crickets in 21-gallon plastic tubs (bought from places like Target or Home Depot) that have been modified for ventilation – we cut holes in the lids and glue wire screen on top. We provide egg layer mash for food, water crystals (usually used for plants) on a small deli cup lid for water, and egg crates to give them places to hide. Continue reading →

Posted in Research Methods | 5 Comments

Fake Amber Lizards

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Jonathan Losos

Anole in amber--but how old?

The fossil record of anoles is disappointingly small. Other than very young (a few thousand years old) fossils found in caves, where owls and other predators may have left them, only four full-fledged fossils are known from the scientific literature. All are lizards preserved in amber, approximately 20 million years old (give or take a few million). Here’s a picture of one here.

But there are a lot more in private hands. The problem, however, is Jurassic Park. Remember how the mad scientists got their dinosaur DNA? They extracted it from mosquitoes entombed in amber. And where did the amber come from? Perhaps you recall the scene of the lawyer (later justifiably devoured by T. rex) getting off a river raft to purchase some amber. Where? The Dominican Republic. And it turns out that those amber mines do exist, only their deposits date to the Miocene, not the Cretaceous. And, more importantly, as well as skeeters and other invertebrates, occasionally an anole-laden piece of amber emerges from these mines. Continue reading →

Posted in Anoles in Commerce | 4 Comments

Anolis equestris potior (Blue Beauty)

Posted on November 9, 2011 by luccioco

By browsing a PDF showing the amphibians and reptiles of Cuba, I found a picture of a beautiful anole:
Anolis equestris potior.

After doing some research, I was able to find very little info about it.  It was described in 1975 by Schwartz and Thomas and lives only on Cayo Santa Maria (province Villa Clara)! It would take on the beautiful blue color during stress or “emotion,” just as some other species of anoles take on a dark phase.

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 1 Comment

SICB 2012 Chocked Full of Anoles

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Thomas Sanger

The schedule for the 2012 meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology was recently published and anole enthusiasts will not be disappointed. A key word search of “Anolis” yields 26 presentations, 7 posters and 19 talks! Topics range widely including presentations on the ecology, behavior, development, and genomics of anoles.

Posted in New Research, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Help Identify a Colombian Anole

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Jonathan Losos

Ken Miyata photographed these anoles about 30 years ago. All we know is that they are from Colombia. Can anyone help?

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Juvenile Feeding Behavior

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Yoel Stuart
Miguel Landestoy's porcatus vs. skipper

Anolis porcatus juvenile stalks a skipper butterfly (Hesperidae) in Bani, Dominican Republic. Photograph by Miguel Landestoy.

Over the past 6 weeks or so, I’ve been spending a lot of time caring for  Anolis carolinensis hatchlings as part of my common garden experiment. One of the most striking things that I’ve noticed about these growing lizards is how a hatchling’s hunting behavior changes over time. Description of juvenile hunting behavior and a cool hunting video from a different species after the jump… Continue reading →

Posted in Natural History Observations, Notes from the Field | 6 Comments

Evolution of a Lizard Room, Part III: The Watering Wand

Posted on November 5, 2011 by Rich Glor

The old (portable pesticide pump), and the new (premium watering wand). Note that watering wand is connected via a hose to the DI water supply at the top left.

The thing about keeping captive anoles that most surprises the uninitiated is the fact that they don’t drink out of bowls.  Instead, anoles generally lap up water provided in the form of daily sprayings.  If you have a few anoles in a terrarium at your house, a handheld pump action sprayer is more than sufficient (think Windex bottle with water in it).  When you scale up to hundreds of cages, however, you’re going to need another solution.  In this post, I briefly review some our lab’s efforts to improve spraying efficiency. Continue reading →

Posted in Research Methods, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Anolis Genome, Human Evolution, Transposable Elements, and Creationism

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Jonathan Losos

For an interesting discussion of how the anole genome informs about human genetics, and discussion of a creationist’s claim that the anole genome can’t tell us anything about evolution, check out the latest post in Anolis Tollis.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

What Can ‘Dead’ Anole Eggs Tell Us About Reptilian Development?

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Dan Warner

Incubating A. sagrei eggs.

Anyone who has incubated reptile eggs knows that moisture is important. Without sufficient moisture, eggs quickly desiccate and shrivel beyond any chance of returning to a healthy, turgid state. Because of this, eggs must experience positive water balance during most of the incubation period for successful embryonic development, and the relative moisture content of the incubation medium can greatly impact how much water is taken up by eggs. In turn, this will affect embryonic metabolism and will have important effects on hatchling size.

Those of us who have incubated thousands of reptile eggs have probably come across the occasional ‘odd ball’ that swells up at a healthy rate, but never hatches, and upon dissection nothing but water and yolk oozes out with no sign of an embryo. Continue reading →

Posted in New Research | 4 Comments

Evolution of a Lizard Room Part II: Maintaining Humidity

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Rich Glor

As Julienne mentioned in the introductory post in our series on lab anole husbandry, we’ve been through a lot of trial and error over the past few years.  One fairly persistent issue has been maintaining our lizard rooms temperature and humidity.  Without humidification, our room’s humidity fluctuated from lows of around 5% in the winter months to highs around 30 or 40% during the summer months.  We’ve used a number of different techniques to introduce more humidity into the room, with varying degrees of success.  A brief recap of our experiences is below. Continue reading →

Posted in Research Methods | 3 Comments

Where Did The Term “Ecomorph” Come From And What Does It Mean?

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Jonathan Losos

Famous figure from the Williams (1972) paper in which the term "ecomorph" was introduced.

I just read another paper that uses the term “ecomorph,” this one in reference to populations of insects. We anolologists know that Ernest Williams introduced the term “ecomorph” in his classic 1972 paper (available here), defining an ecomorph as those “species with the same structural habitat/niche, similar in  morphology and behavior, but not necessarily close phyletically.” The terms “ecomorph” and “ecomorphology” are now widely used. Was Williams really the one who  coined the term? And is its current use consistent with the ideas he developed? Continue reading →

Posted in Classics from the Literature | Tagged | 4 Comments

Evolution of a Lizard Room Part I: Introduction

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Julienne Ng

Anolis carolinensis hatchling and the egg from which it hatched

Breeding anoles to look at inheritance of dewlap color has been a major component of my research. It has also, however, been a major frustration. Every step of the process, from keeping the anoles happy enough to reproduce, to finding eggs, to successfully raising healthy hatchlings to adults has required much tweaking over the years. It has certainly been a work-in-progress and I am happy to say that with both minor and major changes over the years, our lab has transformed into a baby-making factory! This post is the first of a series discussing aspects of anole care, in the hope of both sharing our ideas with people in the anole community, as well as to start a discussion on other techniques people are using to breed/care for anoles. Continue reading →

Posted in Research Methods | 6 Comments

Seven Anole Species Found at a Site on the Ecuador – Colombia Border

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Jonathan Losos

On the Tropical Herping website, Lucas Bustamante provides a report–accompanied by gorgeous photographs–of the seven species of anoles, as well as other reptiles and amphibians, found on a Tropical Herping field trip to Chical, a frontier site near the border of Ecuador and Colombia where the faunas of the Chocoan lowlands and the Andes meet. The diversity of species found on the trip was spectacular, but Bustamante aptly noted that the “anoles were the highlight.”

Posted in Notes from the Field | 6 Comments

Dewy Anole

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Jonathan Losos

Photo of a dew-covered A. carolinensis by Jude Haase at http://500px.com/photo/2565902?from=popular

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment