Author: Jonathan Losos Page 113 of 131

Professor of Biology and Director of the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in Saint Louis. I've spent my entire professional career studying anoles and have discovered that the more I learn about anoles, the more I realize I don't know.

Here's a photo of a Carolina Wren that's caught a brown anole. But this story is something different. Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/24073599@N05/4545405419/

Brian Langerhans, he of mosquitofish fame (but with some anole credentials, such as here and here), writes from Raleigh, NC:

A strange interaction was observed this morning and I’m wondering if you know what’s going on. There are a number of A. carolinensis that live around our house, and today something weird happened. It’s a pretty cool morning, but a big male was on a ledge on our porch. Two Carolina wrens flew over to the anole, the anole sat still while one pecked on it’s body and tail, and then extended it’s dewlap and opened it’s mouth for a while (but was otherwise still) as the other wren pecked around and in it’s mouth. Do you know what might have been happening here? You’d think the birds were harrassing the anole (and maybe it’s too cold for the lizard to fight back), but it didn’t seem like it. There’s no way they could have been cleaning it (like removing mites), right? Any thoughts?

What’s All the Fuss About Dewlaps?

By Jonathan Losos

On October 8, 2011

In New Research

: Anolis carolinensis from http://www.mascotissimo.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/anolis_carolinensis.jpg

A few years ago, Richard Tokarz and colleagues conducted a series of studies in which he surgically disabled the dewlaps of some male A. sagrei and discovered that these functionally dewlapless lizards had no trouble holding a territory and seducing females. In a new study, Henningsen and Irschick found that surgically reducing the size of dewlaps in male A. carolinensis by about one-third had no effect on male-male aggressive interactions in the lab. Makes one wonder what’s the big deal about having a dewlap.

Anole Done In By a Black Widow

By Jonathan Losos

On October 7, 2011

In Natural History Observations

This sad photo comes to us courtesy of arachnologist extraordinaire Sarah Crews, who snapped the unfortunate little lizard (or fortunate spider, depending on your perspective) in Parque del Este in the Dominican Republic. The offending spider is a member of the genus Lactrodectus, the black widows. What a way to go.

Such spider on anole predation is far from unknown. I myself have observed a baby anole dangling in a spider web in a limestone pothole in the Bahamas, and there are a smattering of reports in the literature, including an A. carolinensis taken by a wolf spider, an A. chrysolepis ensnared by a whip spider, and an A. limifrons overpowered by a jumping spider (photo below). Indeed, I vaguely recall a fine example of scientific entrepreneurship, when a spider guy and a lizard guy teamed up to produce two papers from one such observation, publishing in a herp journal a paper with the theme “anole eaten by spider” and an arachnological journal entry with the tag line “spider eats anole.” Now, that’s maximizing research output! Alas, I could not put my finger on the publications. Anyone remember those?

Photo by Harry Greene, from Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree.

Creation Science Take On Anole Genome

By Jonathan Losos

On October 4, 2011

In Anoles and Anolologists in the News

Answersingenesis.org, whose mission is to “proclaim the absolute truth and authority of the Bible with boldness,” has a Science Notes section which provides “a weekly feature examining news from the biblical viewpoint.” Here’s what it had to say about the publication of the Anolis carolinensis genome (full article here):

“Delighted with a discovery related to human origins, researcher Jessica Alföldi noted that “Anoles have a living library of transposable elements,” bits of DNA that don’t code for anything and show up in lots of different locations. About a hundred of these were able to be matched up with counterparts on the human genome. Therefore, she concludes, “In anoles, these transposons are still hopping around, but evolution has used them for its own purposes, turning them into something functional in humans.” Pleased to have learned where humans got these non-coding genetic elements, she explains, “Sometimes you need to be at a certain distance in order to learn about how the human genome evolved.”

This comparative genetic study was certainly exhaustive, but the interpretation of the data in the shadow of the evolutionary tree of life is unjustified and unproven. Knowing that God designed all organisms to live in the same world, we should not be surprised to find that genes coding for the same proteins are needed in many, explaining the similarities across kinds. Each creature created in Creation week was fully equipped with the features it needed and the genes to code for many variations of those features. The fact that some things are similar and others are different does not show that reptiles, mammals, and birds share a common ancestor.”

Anole Theater!

By Jonathan Losos

On October 3, 2011

In Anole Art, Literature, and Humor, Education and Anoles

Tickets available at the Box Office.

Anole Genome Paper in Print and Freely Available Online

By Jonathan Losos

On October 2, 2011

In New Research

In this day of online publication of papers, the significance of the actual appearance of a journal’s latest issue, with an article right there, in ink on paper, has greatly lessened. Nonetheless, I, for one, still consider that moment to be the official publication of a paper. And in that vein, the anole genome paper officially appeared in this week’s issue of Nature. It’s freely downloadable here.

Knight Anole Eats Basilisk

By Jonathan Losos

On October 1, 2011

In Introduced Anoles, Natural History Observations

Even Neil Losin’s cellphone photos turn out spectacular!

Dewlap Color, Gene Flow, Habitat Specialization, and Speciation: A Tale of Two Contact Zones

By Jonathan Losos

On September 29, 2011

In New Research

Dewlap variation in Anolis distichus in Hispaniola. The photos at the bottom show the change in dewlap color along the two transects in the recent study by Ng and Glor.

Despite all of the research on anole evolution conducted in the last 40 years, one important question still eludes us: how does speciation in anoles occur? This, of course, is of fundamental importance, because the great species richness of these lizards implies that speciation has run rampant in this group. So, we’d like to know why.

We don’t know much about speciation in anoles, but we do know a little. First, it is thought that the dewlap plays an important role. Sympatric anole species almost never have identical dewlaps, and experimental and observational evidence suggests that anoles use their dewlaps for species-recognition. Hence, understanding anole speciation may, to a significant extent, reduce to understanding the factors that cause populations to evolve differences in their dewlaps.

A different perspective on anole speciation relates to the classic question of whether allopatry is necessary or whether, as suggested by many recent studies, natural selection driving differentiation—whether in allopatry or not—is a more important stimulus to genetic differentiation. Recent work in the Lesser Antilles by Thorpe and colleagues has argued that environmental differences are the primary drivers of genetic differentiation within anoles, a result also suggested by Leal and Fleishman’s studies on A. cristatellus in Puerto Rico.

In this light, perhaps the most enigmatic anole is Anolis distichus of Hispaniola.

A Second Front in the Sagrei-Cristatellus Wars: Anolis Sagrei Arrives in Costa Rica

By Jonathan Losos

On September 27, 2011

In Introduced Anoles

Not content with kicking butt in Florida, Anolis sagrei has recently been reported from the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Photo by Melissa Losos.

Anole Annals has previously reported on the ongoing interactions between A. cristatellus and A. sagrei in Miami (for example, here and cool video here), as well as the invasion of Costa Rica by A. cristatellus. Now the plot has thickened.

In a 2009 paper in Zootaxa, Savage and Bolaños reported that A. sagrei had been collected in the vicinity of Limon, the same region in which A. cristatellus also has been introduced. Jay Savage has kindly provided further information that A. sagrei is not only common in some parts of central Limon, where A. cristatellus is also known to be common, but it is also reported to be common at a Shell gas station in the nearby town of Moin, a town in which, again, A. cristatellus is common. It will be interesting to see how rapidly A. sagrei spreads in Costa Rica, and how the two species interact. One interesting twist: in Miami, it is A. cristatellus that has invaded in the presence of an already well-established A. sagrei; in Costa Rica, the table is turned. There’s a great research project waiting to be done here!

Anole Crossword Puzzle

By Jonathan Losos

On September 26, 2011

In Anole Annals Trivia

From this site: http://www.drsfostersmith.com/pic/article.cfm?aid=2791 (note: you have to go to the site for the answers; the link below is part of the image pasted into this post and is not active)