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.
The meetings kick off tonight in stinkin’ hot Norman, Ok. From the program guide, here are the anole-themed talks. Can’t attend? Fear not–AA will keep you abreast of events as they unfold.
Sunday, 2:45 P.M. University A, Cox, Robert, Urbach, Davnah, Duryea, M.C., Calsbeek, Ryan. Testing the adaptive significance of progeny sex-ratio bias in the brown anole lizard, Anolis sagrei.
Lizard in an Evolutionary Tree's reworking of Williams' classic figure. Note that A. gundlachi is a trunk-ground anole, not, as indicated, a trunk-crown anole.
In this famous figure, Ernest Williams sketched out his view of how anole diversification occurred on the Greater Antilles, using Puerto Rico as an example. First, species diverge to use different structural habitat, producing the different ecomorphs. Subsequently, within-ecomorph divergence produces species that use the same structural habitat, but which occupy different climatic micro-climates, ranging from cool and moist rainforest to blazing hot and dry semi-desert. This two-stage pattern of evolution is displayed not only on Puerto Rico, but also on Cuba and Hispaniola (Jamaica, the most species deprived island, has little within ecomorph diversity).
In contrast to the plenitude of research in recent years on the adaptive basis of morphological differences among the ecomorphs, relatively little work has focused on the extent to which closely related species—members of the same ecomorph class—have adapted to occupying different microclimates.
Andrea Barragán Forero [andreabarragan10@hotmail.com] is working with A. concolor and A. pinchoti from the collection of the National University of Colombia. She is investigating whether the species are sexually dimorphic in size and shape, and if their morphology is similar to the Greater Antillean ecomorphs. Her work is entitled: Diversificación morfológica de Anolis solitarios: Anolis concolor y Anolis pinchoti de las islas de San Andrés, Providencia y Santa Catalina, Colombia.
Andrea could really use a photograph of a live A. pinchoti. If you can help her, please email her.
Anolis sagrei. Photo by Melissa Losos.
For anyone interested in studying the color of anole dewlaps, Manuel Leal explains the state-of-the-art way to collect color measurements here.
Who would create such a page? And who are the seven people who “like it”? It seems possibly a response to the “Anolis” FB page (featuring the same ID photo), which reassuringly has 109 likes… For the record, of the plethora of anole themed FB pages, AA endorses “Anolis Lizards,” primarily because we created it. Check it out, and please add your own photos and posts.
AnoCar 2.0 is now fully integrated into the Ensembl and UCSC browsers, and NCBI’s Mapviewer. Click to view.
The March issue of IRCF Reptiles & Amphibians: Conservation and Natural History has just been received, and it is their most anoleful issue ever. The highlight is a delightful report of an expedition to tiny and desolate Sombrero Island in the northern Lesser Antilles, home to a population of A. gingivinus which, lacking trees as available perches, is forced to hang onto the vertical walls of the abandoned lighthouse keeper’s house.
In addition, another article reports the introduction of A. sagrei to St. Lucia, complementing introductions of that species to many other islands in the Lesser Antilles: St. Maarten, St. Vincent, Grenada and the Grenadines, and Barbados. Is it just a matter of time before it occupies every island south of the Greater Antilles? Another article, however, reports the snuffing out of a propagule of two A. sagrei that arrived to Layou, St. Vincent in a flower pot from Florida. However, as the article notes, the species thrives elsewhere on the island. Lastly, the Table of Contents page has a nice photograph of A. conspersus from Grand Cayman.
As if articles on anoles weren’t enough a reason to subscribe, I have to comment on the beautiful photographs that can be found throughout this magazine, along with interesting articles on a wide variety of reptiles and amphibians.
Really, I’m not a paid flak for the Leal lab, but there’s some more cool videos posted today on chipojolab. This time, there are two videos of brown anoles foraging. The first is an anole down in the intertidal, munching on a small invertebrate. The second is one up in the bushes, trying–without success–to gobble down a red berry.
It’s time to provide the answers to last week’s quiz, and this reporter–an amateur at creating such events–must admit to having egg on his face. First, though, congrats to WEs and Joe for their astute observations and conclusions. As Joe surmised and Wes speculated, the photos are both from the Bahamas, Staniel Cay to be exact.
The first photo has not three, but four anoles! Well, 3 1/2 to be exact. And the 1/2 anole is crucial. The obvious green anole is A. smaragdinus, the two upper ones are A. distichus, and the bottom half anole–predicted by Joe–is A. sagrei.
Anolis leachi, one of many Lesser Antillean anoles that have been successfully introduced to areas where they don't occur naturally.
In a companion paper to Poe et al. (Evolution, 2011), Latella et al. examine a variety of attributes of the 19 species of anoles that have been successfully introduced to new areas and compare them to a large number of never naturalized anoles. Successful invaders differ in many ways from those who’ve never taken the leap or failed trying, including being larger, having larger scales on the snout, being more sexually dimorphic, occurring at lower elevations, occurring in the Lesser Antilles or near a major port and, among Greater Antillean species, having a large geographic range size. Multivariate analysis considering all these variables, however, indicates that the best predictors are a combination of body size, geographic range, and place of occurrence. This multivariate model not only accounts for which species have become established, but can make predictions about which species may be next. High on the list: the large Lesser Antillean A. bimaculatus and A. griseus and the widespread Hispaniolan grass anole, A. semilineatus. The only other highly likely, non-Lesser Antillean invader among the top nine was, surprisingly to my mind, the Jamaican twig anole, A. valencienni, which, on esthetic grounds, would also be highly ranked.
In looking at the list of introduced species, two not very brilliant observations came to mind. First, many introduced species are from the Lesser Antilles, but they’ve also been introduced to other Lesser Antillean islands. Is that due to geographic proximity and high rates of inter-Lesser Antillean island traffic and commerce, or is it because the Lesser Antilles never have more than two native species? Along these lines, second, most anole introductions are to areas that are depauperate in anoles, whereas very few have occurred in richer areas. This, of course, accords with classic competition theory, but there are other explanations.
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