Author: Jonathan Losos Page 124 of 130

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.

Anolis schwartzi from St. Eustatius. Photo courtesy Robert Powell.

As the last 40 years of research attests, anoles present a great study system to investigate questions in evolutionary ecology, especially at the macroevolutionary, cross-species level. Indeed, the rich literature on a large variety of topics including sexual dimorphism, ecomorphology, size evolution, biomechanics and many other topics—reviewed in Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree—has made anoles a veritable model system for evolutionary study.

One area that has received surprisingly little attention is behavioral ecology. Anole behavior is remarkably easy to study in the field, at least for many species. And interesting patterns of divergence in behavior (e.g., territory, mating systems, foraging mode) among closely related species, combined with convergence at a deeper phylogenetic level, make anoles an attractive group for such studies.

What Does “Anoline” Mean?

By Jonathan Losos

On April 11, 2011

In Ask the Experts

From the British Medical Journal, 1900

I was recently reading a paper in which the phrase “anoline lizards” was frequently used, and it got me thinking: Just what does “anoline” mean? Is it synonymous with “anole”? And is it correct usage? Needless to say, the word is not in standard dictionaries.

Part of the potential confusion comes from the way it was used in the past, at least by some. Back in the old days, pre-molecular data, the standard wisdom was that the genera Chamaeleolis, Chamaelinorops, and Phenacosaurus were early offshoots of the anole radiation that had evolved prior to Anolis. Hence, Ernest Williams used the term “anoline” to refer to them, as well as Anolis species. In this sense, “anoline” might be construed to apply more broadly than just to members of the genus Anolis (and, of course, should not be confused with “anoloid” which referred to an even broader phylogenetic grouping that included other, more distantly related lizards). In this sense, “anoline” had a technical meaning beyond just Anolis. But…some workers, even back then, referred to these three other genera as “anoles” as well. Moreover, we now are confident that the three genera arose within Anolis, which leads most modern workers to no longer recognize those genera, but rather subsume the species within Anolis (though it is still perfectly appropriate to recognize them as subclades of Anolis).

Statistics on the Commercial Trade of Anoles

By Jonathan Losos

On April 8, 2011

In All Posts

Photo from http://www.petworldshop.com/

We’ve had a number of posts in recent months on the remarkable variety of anole species available in the pet trade (for example, here and here), particularly in the Europe. Another aspect of the pet trade, however, is the volume at which it occurs, and in this case, it is probably a few common species that make up the bulk of the trade. A recent paper in the Herpetological Journal explored reptile and amphibian commerce in Great Britain over a ten-year period from the mid-1990’s to mid-2000’s. The paper has some interesting points on various aspects of the dynamics of the trade, including how price has changed, the role of captive breeding, and other points. Anoles aren’t a central focus of this paper, but it does report that the price of anoles has increased over time, even after correcting for inflation: 26% in both A. carolinensis and A. sagrei, but only 4% in A. equestris. This was about middle of the pack for lizard species surveyed. Some had become more expensive—more than 400% more in Parson’s chameleon—but about half the species had become cheaper, green iguanas dropping by 69% at the other extreme.

I summarized what I could learn about the anole trade in Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree. It isn’t much, but here’s what I had to say: From 1998–2002, more than 250,000 A. carolinensis and more than 100,000 A. sagrei were legally exported from the United States; in the same period, as many as 30,000 anoles of various species may have been imported into the U.S. Figures for imports into other countries are unavailable, but may be large because there are many reptile hobbyists in Europe. The United States is the only country likely to have much domestic trade in anoles, and these numbers, too, are great because many A. carolinensis and A. sagrei are captured and sold within the United States, not only for the pet trade, but also to laboratories, educational supply companies, and zoos. Data on the magnitude of this trade is scarce, but more than 250,000 anoles were collected in Florida in a four-year period in the early 1990s (this number may be a substantial underestimate because dealers were not required to report the number of the introduced A. sagrei and as a result, most did not do so.). in Louisiana, nearly a million A. carolinensis a year were collected in the mid-1990s, but that number has declined to around 350,000 per year in 2006, apparently as a result of declining demand, rather than shortage of anoles.

Newly Discovered Anole Hybrid

By Jonathan Losos

On April 7, 2011

In Anole Art, Literature, and Humor

What’s All That Head-Bobbing About?

By Jonathan Losos

On April 5, 2011

In New Research

: Anolis sagrei displaying. Photo by Valerie Simon.

Anoles are renowned for their displays in which they do pushups, bob their heads up and down, and unfurl their colorful dewlaps. Indeed, the internet is awash with videos of such behavior (here’s a good one of A. sagrei including some cool “slo-mo”; here’s a vicious fight with audience commentary; and for the pacifists out there, here’s a solitary brown anole displaying).

But what’s all the displaying about? And, more specifically, is there any significance to how much a particular male displays?

Anolis limifrons Down the Hatch

By Jonathan Losos

On April 4, 2011

In Natural History Observations

There’s a nice sequence of an eyelash viper swallowing an Anolis limifrons here (scroll down).

The Anole Genome Is Coming! The Anole Genome Is Coming!

By Jonathan Losos

On April 3, 2011

In Anoles and Anolologists in the News

More than six years in the making, costing untold millions, the fully sequenced genome of A. carolinensis is coming soon to a journal near you. After many promised delivery dates have come and gone, a blockbuster draft manuscript has finally arrived in the hands of its coauthors. Hopefully, things now will move expeditiously and the paper will be published before too much longer, at last bringing the genetic wonders of anoles to the world at large.

Tom Schoener Wins Henry Fitch Award

By Jonathan Losos

On April 2, 2011

In Anoles and Anolologists in the News

Photo from March, 2011 issue of Copeia

From the pages of Copeia: The Henry S. Fitch Award for Excellence in Herpetology is given annually to an individual for long-term excellence in the study of amphibian and or reptile biology. In addition to consideration of the research portfolio, the committee also considers the educational and service impacts of the individual’s career. The award has been given annually since 1998 and like previous winners of the award this year’s Fitch Award winner has a long career that focuses on ecology and evolution and he has directed his attention on lizards. The Fitch Committee was chaired by Maureen Kearney in 2010. Whitfield Gibbons and Jonathan Losos served as committee members and were elected by the ASIH board of governors. This year the committee had to select from among several strong nominations and their deliberations were a challenge. According to the member that nominated this year’s winner, our 2010 awardee is one of the greatest zoologists of our time. His contributions to theoretical ecology and evolutionary biology are immense; he is the author of six Citation Classics. The publication record of the 2010 Fitch winner more than demonstrates long-term excellence for study in the field of herpetology. The curriculum vitae of this year’s Fitch awardee is impressive for its depth and its breadth, and he early on defined the “fundamental questions” most ecologists ask of their organisms. Several ecological themes emerge when one examines his body of peer-reviewed publications: foraging ecology, foraging theory, resource partitioning, niche quantification, spatial ecology, population biology, competition, niche shifts, island ecology, effects of predators on prey, food web dynamics, and effects of hurricanes on island taxa. While the vast majority of scientific papers focus on lizards, our awardee has also published extensively on birds, spiders, and even plants in his attempt to understand the fundamental ecology of organisms. This year’s winner was the first chairperson of the Department of Evolution and Ecology at UC Davis and one of the youngest scientists ever elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Diamondbacks of the Anole World

By Jonathan Losos

On April 1, 2011

In New Research

Variation in female A. sagrei patterns. Figure from Calsbeek et al. (2010)

Many species of anoles exhibit sexual dimorphism in back patterning, often with the male being relatively uniform and the female festooned with stripes, diamonds, speckles or other geometries (in a few cases, the situation is reversed and the males are the dandies). Surprisingly, there are no reviews documenting the extent of this phenomenon, much less comparative studies explaining its significance (adaptive or otherwise).

Perhaps even more interesting, in some species females exhibit multiple pattern phenotypes within a single population. Most study to date has focused on A. sagrei in the Bahamas. The seminal paper on this topic was Schoener and Schoener’s 1976 study in Evolution, which suggested that pattern variation was related to crypsis, with different patterns being more cryptic in different parts of the structural habitat (e.g., stripes are cryptic on narrow branches). In support of this hypothesis, the Schoeners showed that within a locality, females with different patterns occurred in different parts of the habitat, and among sites, the relative frequency of the types varied in relation to inter-site variation in vegetation.

25 Species of Anoles at the World’s Largest Reptile Show

By Jonathan Losos

On March 30, 2011

In Anoles in Commerce

The Hamm Reptile Show, operated by Terraristika Hamm, is said to be the largest reptile expo in the world. Several shows are held a year, the most recent 2½ weeks ago. One AA correspondent reports there were “plenty of captive bred anole species. For example: barbatus, porcus, valencienni, noblei, bartschi, roquet, baracoae, allisoni. I think more than 25 species available just on this show.” It’s surprisingly hard to get information on the show on the internet. Can any of our readers tell us more?