The first three paragraphs of Jane Peterson’s contribution to the Second Anolis Newsletter.
Jane Peterson’s contribution to TheSecondAnolis Newsletter remains one of the most comprehensive exemplars of functional-morphological research of the anoline appendicular girdles. In just a few short paragraphs Peterson (1974) outlined the key differences in pectoral girdle morphology between the Anolis ecomorphs, drawing information from both field observations and anatomical dissections of anoles from all four Greater Antillean islands. The outlined study could have formed a major contribution to our understanding of ecomorphology, had these brief observations ever been expanded into a scientific publication. Sadly, they remained as notes, confined to a brief communique on an informal basis (that continues to be formally cited). Several intriguing studies hence have examined anole appendicular morphology, but rarely allowed for implications that reach across multiple island radiations (e.g. Anzai et al. 2014, Herrel et al. 2018).
With my 2016 Ph.D. thesis, I set out to quantify what Jane Peterson had observed forty years prior, and must confess that I still fall short of reproducing the multitude of implications that Peterson’s (1974) brief descriptions alluded to. Instead of combining video-recorded movement cycles with morphological descriptions, my comparisons are solely based on three-dimensional shape analysis of the skeletal elements that comprise the breast-shoulder apparatus (BSA): the clavicle, interclavicle, presternum, and scapulocoracoid (Fig. 1). Employing the power of computed tomography scanning, and geometric morphometric analysis, I quantified the shapes of the central elements of the pectoral girdle, and compared these across anole radiations.
As with earlier work, I focused on the Jamaican ecomorph representatives, and sought out their ecomorph counterparts from Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, particularly targeting those species that are the most and least similar to the Jamaican forms. That last line of thought did not reveal any straightforward answers, as the complex structural shape of the BSA allows these anoles to be relatively distinct in some aspects, while being quite similar in others. For example, the general shape of the presternum and interclavicle are quite similar between the two trunk-ground anoles Anolis lineatopus (Jamaica) and A. gundlachi (Puerto Rico), while that of the scapulocoracoid differs quite remarkably between the two. These complex associations will take a more detailed analysis than what is warranted here, so I’ll focus on the bigger picture instead.
Fig. 1: CT-rendition of the skeletal components of the breast-shoulder apparatus of Anolis baleatus in lateromedial view, depicting all anatomical features described in the text. The gray arrow denotes anterior.
Skeletal elements of the BSA in isolation
Previous analysis of the scapulocoracoid in isolation revealed that its shape differs between Anolis habitat specialists, and resembles a particularly dorsoventrally tall shape in twig anoles (Tinius et al. 2020). The other ecomorph groups (trunk-ground, trunk-crown, and crown-giant) show obvious tendencies towards a particular structural organization, but in none of these does the scapulocoracoid resemble a truly characteristic shape.
Figure 1. Landmarks (black point circled in white) and sliding landmarks (black points) used in the geometric morphometric analysis.
The knowledge of the past squamate fauna of the Guadeloupe islands (French Lesser Antilles) dramatically increased these last years in the framework of two European paleontological research programs. New archaeological and paleontological excavations (about which I previously talked) have been conducted and led to the discovery of thousands of squamate remains allowing to complete the pioneering works conducted by G. K. Pregill in the 90’s (Pregill et al., 1994). Results obtained on iguanas (Bochaton et al., 2016b), galliwasps (Bochaton et al., 2016a), ameivas (Bochaton et al., 2017a) and other taxa (Bailon et al., 2015; Bochaton et al., 2015; Boudadi-Maligne et al., 2016) point to high extirpation and extinction rates, mainly taking place during the last centuries after the European colonization of the archipelago and probably in relation to introduction of exogenous competitors and predators, as well as the practice of intensive agriculture.
In the middle of all of these extinctions, anoles, which are still very common in Guadeloupe, appeared to be kind of indestructible and were apparently not impacted at all by recent anthropogenic disturbances. However, the study of a huge assemblage of anole remains from Marie-Galante Island dated from Late Pleistocene to the 14th century reveals that this first impression was far from true.
Nearly 30,000 anole remains coming from several deposits were investigated using a combination of morphological and morphometric approaches. Size estimations (see Bochaton, 2016; Bochaton and Kemp, 2017) indicate that whatever the stratigraphic layer they come from, fully mature individuals range in three groups of Snout-Vent Length (SVL) size (Figure 2).
Figure 2. SVL reconstructed on the basis of fully mature humeri (N = 66) with the results of a mixture analysis indicating a trimodal distribution. MTMS1, minimal theoretical maximal size obtained from the smallest fully mature humerus; MTMS 2, minimal theoretical maximal size obtained from the largest immature humerus; MTMS 3, minimal theoretical maximal size obtained from the smallest mature humerus included in the intermediately sized group.
These SVLs partly match those of the females (max 75mm SVL) and males (max 120 mm SVL) of the modern solitary Marie-Galante anole (Anolis ferreus). However, a third group of fossil specimens of very large size reaching 150mm SVL also occurred in the deposits and has no modern counterpart on the island. Still, morphological analysis indicates that these large specimens were also A. ferreus. A geometric morphometric analysis (Figure 1, above) was also conducted on dentaries of Marie-Galant fossils and included in a modern sample of Lesser Antillean anoles.
Figure 3. Two first axes of the PCA conducted on shape data collected for fossil and modern A. ferreus dentaries showing a diminution of morphological variability between fossil and modern anoles.
This analysis reveals a strong heterogeneity of the morphology of the dentary mostly depending of their size (allometry). The three fossil size groups are however closer to modern A. ferreus than to any other modern taxa and are linked by a common allometric relationship between their size and shape which differs from modern A. ferreus. The morphological variability of the fossil dentaries is also higher than that of modern A. ferreus (Figure 3).
These results indicate that all fossils are likely to correspond to A. ferreus. However, fossil representatives are more morphologically variable in terms of size, shape, and allometry than modern A. ferreus.The morphology of fossil A. ferreus remained stable during more than 30,000 years before an abrupt change that occurred during the last centuries. There is, however, a void of fossil data during the modern period which precludes linking this reduction of morphological variability between fossil and modern A. ferreus to a distinct event. Yet, this phenomenon is contemporaneous to the numerous extinction events documented on Marie-Galante and is thus very likely to be also related to the anthropization of the island.
This study also provides a strong argument again the hypothesis of the past occurrence of a second anole species smaller than modern A. ferreus on Marie-Galante and used to explain the large size reached nowadays by this insular solitary anole.
More details can be found in the publication of this work:
Bailon, S., C. Bochaton, and A. Lenoble. 2015. New data on Pleistocene and Holocene herpetofauna of Marie-Galante (Blanchard Cave, Guadeloupe Islands, French West Indies): Insular faunal turnover and human impact. Quaternary Science Reviews 128:127–137.
Bochaton, C. 2016. Describing archaeological Iguana Laurenti, 1768 (Squamata: Iguanidae) populations: size and skeletal maturity. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 26:716–724.
Bochaton, C., and M. E. Kemp. 2017. Reconstructing the body sizes of Quaternary lizards using Pholidoscelis Fitzinger, 1843 and Anolis Daudin, 1802 as case studies. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 37:e1239626.
Bochaton, C., R. Boistel, F. Cassagrande, S. Grouard, and S. Bailon. 2016a. A fossil Diploglossus (Squamata, Anguidae) lizard from Basse-Terre and Grande-Terre islands (Guadeloupe, French West-Indies). Scientific Report 28475:1–12.
Bochaton, C., S. Grouard, R. Cornette, I. Ineich, A. Tresset, and S. Bailon. 2015. Fossil and subfossil herpetofauna from Cadet 2 Cave (Marie-Galante, Guadeloupe Islands, F. W. I.): Evolution of an insular herpetofauna since the Late Pleistocene. Comptes Rendus Palévol 14:101–110.
Bochaton, C., S. Bailon, I. Ineich, M. Breuil, A. Tresset, and S. Grouard. 2016b. From a thriving past to an uncertain future: Zooarchaeological evidence of two millennia of human impact on a large emblematic lizard (Iguana delicatissima) on the Guadeloupe Islands (French West Indies). Quaternary Science Reviews 150:172–183.
Bochaton, C., R. Boistel, S. Grouard, I. Ineich, A. Tresset, and S. Bailon. 2017a. Evolution, diversity and interactions with past human populations of recently extinct Pholidoscelis lizards (Squamata: Teiidae) from the Guadeloupe Islands (French West-Indies). Historical Biology.
Boudadi-Maligne, M., S. Bailon, C. Bochaton, F. Cassagrande, S. Grouard, N. Serrand, and A. Lenoble. 2016. Evidence for historical human-induced extinctions of vertebrate species on La Désirade (French West Indies). Quaternary Research 85:54–65.
Pregill, G. K., D. W. Steadman, and D. R. Watters. 1994. Late Quaternary vertebrate faunas of the Lesser Antilles: historical components of Caribbean biogeography. Bulletin of Carnegie Museum of Natural History 30:1–51.
Birds are lovely animals. Our avian friends swoop through the air, defecate on field equipment, and consume lizards. What’s not to like?! Well, their shoulder region, for example. Lost interclavicle, reverted muscle pathways, and so many other anatomical adaptations that appear crucial for the modern avian life style, but that are hard to explain in a gradual-evolutionary context. Reconstructing the structural evolution of the avian shoulder remains a challenging task to students of biomechanics and kinematics. When I left my European homestead to enter the Canadian realm of biological sciences, I was hoping to solve the evolutionary mystery of the avian shoulder, at least in part. Alas, the discovery of anoles sent me on a much more convoluted journey.
