httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2RXWqiHjhA
Here’s a nice video clip of a green anole (A. carolinensis) creeping along a branch and displaying. To me, it’s a nice reminder that the different ecomorphs not only live in different places, but interact with their environment in very different ways. You’d rarely see a trunk-ground anole, such as A. sagrei, behaving in this manner, but it’s quite typical for trunk-crown anoles.
Yesterday, we heard a report about red-headed agamas sipping lattes at Starbucks; today, news reaches us that invasive brown anoles in Georgia are munching on Doritos Locos at Taco Bell. Read Janson Jones residential brown anole report at dust tracks on the web.
Red headed agama in Florida. Photo by John Rahn.
Anole correspondent John Rahn, of Big Kahuna fame, reports that red-headed agamas are becoming established well beyond Miami. Here’s what he has to say after re-spotting an individual in a Starbucks parking lot that he had previously seen last fall: “I don’t know what he’s eating in that parking lot, but he is HUGE now. My girl at Starbucks says these are all over the place in Jupiter now. He’s survived the fairly cold weather we’ve had, this winter. He is a beauty! Saw another one, same shape, but smaller and very little color.”
AA recently discussed these guys at the Fairchild Botanical Gardens in Miami, and James Stroud suggested that they may have a big and negative effect on anoles, similar to that of curly-tailed lizards. Curlies are also in Jupiter and areas north of Miami–I wonder how these two sun-loving species get along.
Fig. 1 from Muñoz et al. (2013) Anolis marmoratus subspecies on Basse Terre (left) and Grande Terre (right)
Unlike the extensive within-island speciation that anoles have undergone in the Greater Antilles, we have no evidence that the same has occurred in the Lesser Antilles. Rather, Lesser Antillean islands that contain two species are thought to be the result of dispersal events rather than in situ cladogenesis. Despite such low species diversity, however, phenotypic diversity on many of these islands certainly is not lacking. Some Lesser Antillean anoles exhibit spectacular geographic variation in head, body and dewlap colouration and pattern, as well as body size and scalation, that appears to be adaptive to different environments. So, while this variation has not led to complete speciation in any Lesser Antillean anole, is there some evidence that these phenotypically divergent populations are at some stage of the speciation process? Also, how does phenotypic divergence occur on these smaller islands when there seems to be little opportunity for geographical isolation?
AA contributor, Martha Muñoz and colleagues tackle these very questions in a recent paper in Molecular Ecology. Muñoz et al. focus on the stunning phenotypic diversity of the Anolis marmoratus complex on Guadeloupe, which has been categorised into 12 subspecies. On Grande Terre, in particular, two subspecies can be found: A. m. speciosus inhabits mesic habitats in the southwest and A. m. inornatus inhabits the xeric lowlands of the north and east. Males share a yellow-orange coloured dewlap but differ in head, body and eye ring colouration, while females and juveniles of the two subspecies are similarly drab in colour.
Ecuador’s most wanted! This lizard was thought to be extinct for nearly fifty years, and still after its “rediscovery” in 2005, it remains hard to locate.
Most records of Horned Anole are in disturbed areas, including near roads vegetation, botanical gardens and bamboo trees.
It took me more than two years of constant visits to Mindo, a cloud forest-town in the Western Ecuadorian Foothills, to meet with the Horned Anole (Anolis proboscis)! I always felt it was a mythological reptile, not only for Ecuadorian herps but throughout the world. Has anyone seen a lizard with a long appendix on the tip of his nose, a wide color throughout the body, prehensile tail and even spines on the back? It is difficult not to speak mystically when we refer to Horned Anole.
For over 50 years it was listed as “Possibly extinct,” until 2005, when a group of Ecuadorian scientists “rediscovered” it. But it was not until two years ago when the global and local Anole experts, led by Jonathan Losos, Steven Poe and Fernando Ayala, started several expeditions to investigate everything about its morphology, phylogeny and natural history.
Its tail is prehensile and is possibly used to embrace the branches when it sleeps.
The Horned Anole is a diurnal and slow-moving lizard that usually is found perched between 4-8 meters above the ground. Although most records are in vegetation on roadsides, highways and near open areas can be very difficult to find due to their excellent camouflage that blends perfectly with twigs full of mosses, lichens and epiphytes, perfectly rhyming its colorful skin.
But what use their proboscis? Sexual selection and defense of territory are the first hypotheses that leap to the mind. Science will tell us soon! But even that, we are left to enjoy its beauty and unparalleled mystique.
Definitely its silhouette is unmistakable. His sharp proboscis distinguishes it from all Ecuadorian lizards.
It can be difficult to find. Not only because they are commonly perched on high branches, but also for their camouflage, forming an ideal combination with branches and colorful leaves.
It is slow-moving and spends most of its time 450–800 cm from ground and feeds on a variety of arboreal arthropods.
Anolis proboscis sleeps on horizontal twigs and leaves (juveniles seem to prefer lower perches).
Not sure how I came across these on the web, but I found Robert Hoogveld’s flickr page and he kindly allowed me to post these fabulous photos. Some may recall the post on Robert’s article on A. proboscis two years ago. Apparently, he has some more good stuff up his sleeves, or so he tells me.
Anolis marmoratus. Photo by Robert Hoogveld
Anolis (Chamaelinorops) barbouri. Photo by Robert Hoogveld.
Anolis oculatus. Photo by Robert Hoogveld
Seaweed washed ashore on a Bahamian island. Photo by Dave Spiller.
Ecologists are increasingly recognizing the myriad connections not only among species within an ecosystem, but between species in different ecosystems. Case in point: seaweed often washes ashore, and it affects leaves on the plants found near the shoreline. How’s that, you might ask? Well, the seaweed decays and releases nutrients that act as fertilizer, increasing the growth of land plants. That’s good for the plants, but it also makes their leaves more tasty, and hence plant-eating insects are attracted and cause more damage to the leaves.
That seems straightforward enough, but then it gets more complicated. As the seaweed decays, it attracts lots of insects. And the insects, in turn, attract lizards. And, in fact, if you happen to be studying this process on small islands in the Bahamas, as Jonah Piovia-Scott and a team from UC-Davis were, then those lizards are our favorites, brown anoles. And if there are more brown anoles around, then they’ll eat more of the herbivorous insects that plague the land plants, and so the washed-up seaweed actually decrease the damage to land plant leaves, thanks to the helpful consumption of the anoles.
Except…maybe the lizards will be so delighted by the seaweed that they’ll spend all of their time there, eating the insects on the seaweed, and thus neglecting the insects on the landplants, so now the effect of seaweed on the land plants becomes negative again.
So which is it? That’s what Piovia-Scott et al. set out to discover, and they’ve just reported the results in a paper in Oecologia. And the diagram to the left explains it succinctly. Seaweed increases nitrogen in the leaves, which increases herbivory. Seaweed also increases lizard density, which decreases herbivory, though the negative effect isn’t as great as the positive effect of the nitrogen. Moreover, seaweed also causes lizards to shift their diet, which has a small (and statistically non-significant) positive effect on herbivory because the lizards aren’t eating as many of the land plant herbivores. Bottom line: seaweed increases leaf damage; lizards can’t prevent it, in part because their effects are schizophrenic: more lizards, but eating fewer herbivores.
Interestingly, these results are opposite of what the same team of authors found in a study we discussed two years ago. The difference was that in that study, a big pile of seaweed was laid out at one time and the results were followed over a short period, whereas this study followed natural seaweed deposition and compared sites differing in the amount of seaweed washed ashore, following their sites for a lengthier period of time.
One last point: how did the researchers document that the lizards were switching diet? Not from sitting around and watching the lizards, but by measuring the carbon isotope ratios in their tails. Marine vegetation tends to have higher ratios of Carbon-13 than terrestrial sources, and so insects feeding on plants from different areas will, in turn, have different ratios, which means that, in turn, one can look at the Carbon-13 ratios in lizard tissue and get a sense of from which ecosystem they’re deriving their carbon. And in this case, the more seaweed, the higher the ratio. Pretty nifty!
httpv://youtu.be/Du9oQr8PQC4
This occurred at 10:20 AM April 12, 2004 in South Miami Florida. I was working in my kitchen at my home in South Miami Florida with my back porch door open, when my attention was captured by a loud “yelp-yelp” sound in repetition. I also noticed that I heard the “distress” call of a cardinal – similar to what I would hear if there was a cat or snake in my backyard. I grabbed my Sony cybershot 3.2MP and ran out my back door. On an adjacent pony tail palm (Nolina recurvate) just below the crown, about 8’ off the ground I saw a large knight anole (Anolis equestris) in a head down position. The anole had in its mouth, the back legs (below the knees) of a Cuban treefrog (Osteopilus sepentrionalis). The frog was making a very loud repetitive “yelp-yelp” sound while trying to climb out/away from the lizard’s mouth using its front legs. There were a pair of cardinals and mockingbirds, and a blue jay that were attracted to the sound. The cardinal was calling, and the mockingbird was approaching and slowly opening and moving its wings in a “swimming fashion,” making it obvious as it walked across the ground. The birds’ focus seemed due to the frog’s call. I have never experienced any reaction of a bird to the many resident Knight anoles in my property or elsewhere. I managed to get a short clip (meaning to take an image) and a captured still is what you see attached. After a few more cycles of yelping, the frog managed to break free from the Anolis’ mouth and hopped away behind my AC unit. Having had some firsthand past experience with Osteopilus’s antipredatory compounds, I wondered if they had the same effect on lizard’s bucccal cavity as they did on this (at the time intoxicated) human. I had heard a very similar call from an unidentified tree frog in Costa Rica 1998. It had been captured by a parrot snake (Leptophis sp.) that fell to the ground in front of a friends horse while we were jungle riding in Guanacaste. To humans, the call does sound very much like a baby, or toddler’s wail. I would be interested in knowing if it serves to attract other predators giving the “crier” a possible distracting means of escape.
Woo-hoo! Check out these anole beauties. And the green one actually has a red dewlap and looks passably like Anolis carolinensis. Google “plush anole” or “glitter anole” and you can have your own–for as little as eight buckaroos.
But there’s a backstory. Over the years, two undergraduates who worked in my lab each gave me a plush anole as a thank you present when they graduated. One day I was talking on the phone and idly picked up one of the stuffed fellows. Still attached to it was the information tag. And as I opened the tag, which contained natural history information, reasonably accurate, on A. carolinensis, I was amazed to see this:
No doubt, you can see one cause of my amazement. That’s no Carolina green anole, but rather its ecomorphic döppelgánger from Hispaniola, A. chlorocyanus. And, moreover, that’s not just any photo of a Hispaniolan green–that’s my photo! And, as you might have guessed, used without permission.
Incensed, I looked to the bottom of the tag for the company that makes the toy, Fiesta Toys. I looked them up online and went to their contact page. I filled in the little box on the page, noting that they had used my intellectual property without my permission. I pushed “send,” figuring I’d never get any response, much less satisfaction.
The photograph above from Daffodil’s Photo Blog shows a brown anole that has just caught a roach almost as big as itself. The lizard was actually able to run away with its prey, so we don’t know if it was consumed.
This, in turn, reminds us of a previous post of DFB in which a green anole again caught a really large prey item, in that case a moth, but again the outcome was unknown.
Imagine eating a Big Mac 80% of your body weight. Think how long you could run on that, and you’re warm-blooded–lizards have a much lower metabolic rate. How often do anoles get this bonanza? Certainly, most of their prey items are quite tiny in relative terms. And how often do they catch prey that they ultimately can’t ingest? There is a lot of data on anole diets in the literature, but no one has every synthesized it to see what general messages can be extracted, what broader questions–such as this one–can be addressed. Would make for an interesting project.
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