Don’t think I’ve ever seen one this shade of turquoise. Anyone know where it’s from?
As we all know, 2012 has been designated the Year of the Lizard. To stay up-to-date on lizardy festivities, as well as to stay abreast of issues in lizard conservation, consult http://www.parcplace.org/news-a-events/year-of-the-lizard.html. The poster can be downloaded at that site as well.
The good folks at Science magazine are giving away copies of the recent paper for free! Get yours today. Just click here.
Cover of Science, 2 March 2012
Anoles have gotten the cover again! This time it’s on tomorrow’s issue of Science for this work by Jason Kolbe and colleagues, covered here on Anole Annals. The photograph of A. sagrei is by Neil Losin, whose photo- and videographic works have been profiled on Anole Annals several times before.
Colombia holds more than 75 species of Anole lizards, making them the second most speciose vertebrate genus in our country next to the frog genus Pristimantis. Most species are shared with other countries of Central America and northern South America, but anoles have diverged in such an incredible way in Colombia that a large number of quite interesting and endemic species occur in the mountain highlands of the Andes, the insular portion of the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean and the Chocó and Amazonian lowlands. Thirteen anole species have been registered for the Caribbean region, including lowlands and serranías. Most of these species have not been studied and the remaining habitats are disappearing at an accelerated rate, which is the reason why I find myself motivated to write this note, focusing on one of the least known neotropical lizard biotas.
Anolis Onca a desert sand dweller, Guajira, Colombia. Photo courtesy of Luis Alberto Rueda 2012
Sierra Nevada lonely twig anole. Anolis solitarius from Sierra Nevada de santa Marta (photo by Luis Alberto Rueda)
The Caribbean lowlands are one of the hottest and driest places in Colombia. This region extends from the northern Guajira deserts to the floodable plains of Cordoba. Its interior dominant habitats include seasonal dry forests, desert formations and riparian ecosystems. These habitats have been considered to be threatened by deforestation; only 1% of the dry forest formations still remain, which is why it is considered one of the most vulnerable ecosystems in the nation next to cloud forests and paramos. Islands can be those land surfaces surrounded by water or those which have simply been isolated preventing migration of dispersal-limited species such as small vertebrates. Islands as the San Andres archipelago and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta have been isolated for thousands of years in such a way that most of the fauna that inhabits them is endemic. Anoles are not the exception; three endemics are registered for the cloud forests of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Anolis santamartae, A. menta, A. solitarius) and two species for the San Andres and Providencia islands (Anolis Pinchoti, A. concolor).
I received this image from a friend of mine living in Panama. He asked me to identify the anole pictured for him. My immediate response back to him was Anolis insignis. However after looking at the animal I started to doubt my identification… the gular color seems to have too much yellow. I know that several of the Dactyloa group have been recently described, so this is possibly something new?
The photo is from Altos del Maria, cloud forest, a little east of El Valle, Panama.
Anyone dispute my ID? If so, what do you think?
Three years ago I received a message from Ray Huey asking me if I’d be interested in collaborating on an NSF grant to return to Puerto Rico and replicate the studies on Anolis thermal biology and ecology that we had conducted during the 1970s. The idea was to have the original investigators, including Ray, myself, and Paul Hertz, work in the same study areas, utilize the same techniques, and document changes that had occurred over the past 35-40 years. Our ultimate goal was to understand the impact of climate warming on Anolis populations over a range of habitats, from the Luquillo rainforest in northeastern Puerto Rico to the Guanica dry forest in the southwestern corner of the island.
We eventually received NSF funding for the project, and to date I have carried out field work in Luquillo and Guanica during July 2011 and January 2012. Andres Garcia, my long term colleague from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, joined me in Puerto Rico as a co-investigator on the grant. At the Luquillo study site, we successfully repeated all phases of the research I conducted in July 1976 and January 1977 (Lister, B. C. 1981. Seasonal niche relationships of rainforest anoles. Ecology 62(6):1548-1560). The major components of this study were (1) a July and January census of forest dwelling anoles (A. gundlachi, A. evermanni, and A. stratulus) (2) measurements of perch heights, perch diameters, and perch site insolation (3) recording of body temperatures for all forest species (4) sweep samples of the forest understory during both the winter and summer seasons (5) collection of male and female A. gundlachi for subsequent scoring of reproductive condition and stomach content analysis.
Comparison of our results with those of my previous study indicate significant changes in all of the above areas.
Knight anole eating a bird! Photo courtesy of Paul Richards.
In their recent paper on home range of A. equestris, Nicholson and Richards reported on a knight anole consuming a migrating blue-gray gnatcatcher. Here are the full details, in the words of Paul Richards:
“Kirsten Nicholson and I were attempting to resight one of our radio transmitter equipped A. equestris. Resighting transmitted individuals was difficult as they are hard to see even when we have a clear signal. We would regularly spend 15-20min search, and have a 50% change of resighting a transmitted individual (or less, I cannot remember – but we can probably estimate this from our notes). I saw a Blue-gray gnatcatcher land on a branch right in our general search area that was about a 2m diameter zone of the canopy of a small tree at about 3-5m height. I looked away continuing the search and seconds later I heard an alarm call, looked back to the spot and saw the A. equestris in the picture with the bird in its mouth. This A. equestris was unmarked, and I do not recall ever resighting the transmitted individual that we detected in the area. We can check our notes but I think it took at least 20min for this A. equestris to finish eating the gnatcatcher. I recall in using the branch to wipe/swipe its jaw across, one side the the other, repeatedly, to help get the bird in its mouth.”
Green anoles can change from green to brown. Occasionally, they do it only part way. Photo from http://www.floridagardener.com/img/critters/Greenanole.jpg
Widely, if inaccurately, known as the American chameleon, Anolis carolinensis is renowned for its ability to change color from a sparkling emerald to a deep brown. Surprisingly, we don’t really know what factors determine whether a particular lizard chooses to be green or brown at a particular time.
Here’s what I had to say about it in Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree (pp. 279-281; I’ve omitted most references here):
“In theory, we might expect green anoles to match their background, turning green when in vegetation and brown when against a woody surface. Although widely believed, this idea is not strongly supported (reviewed in Jenssen et al., Herp. Monographs, 1995).
Breakdown of anoles in the Schwartz collection housed at KU, highlighting proportional representation of the five most frequently sampled species.
Albert Schwartz was a prolific describer of new anole species and author of peerless contributions to our understanding of geographic variation within and among widespread anole species (see 1 and 2). In addition to his published contributions, Schwartz and his colleagues accumulated a massive collection of preserved specimens that continues to serve as a foundation for research on anoles. Although these specimens are now housed at a number of institutions, the bulk of his anole material – 15,511 specimens to be precise – can now be found at the University of Kansas. This collection includes representatives of 93 anole species, but the sampling among species is highly uneven and the five most frequently sampled species account for more than 35% of the total collection. Sampling of these top five species ranges from 552 to 1838 individuals. My trivia question to you, my fellow anole enthusiasts, is “What are the top five species in Schwartz’s KU collection?” As a hint, I’ll remind you that Schwartz’s efforts were focused primarily on the northern Caribbean and that he spent the last few decades of his career working extensively on Hispaniola.
The species pictured above has one of the largest dewlaps of any anole, with a ceratobranchial that extends posteriorly well beyond the forelimbs. What species is it?
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