The Ecomorph Line of of watches is half off today at Zazzle.com. Check ’em out, and use the code SUNDAYDEAL59.
Category: All Posts Page 111 of 153
An iguanito. Photo from the Coastal Star.
A nice article in the Coastal Star just reported on the spread of knight anoles through Florida. The article contains numerous nuggets, such as quotes from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission stating that they’re worried about bigger things (e.g., pythons, tegus), that they’re locally called “iguanitos,” and that iguanas are rebounding from freeze-caused mortality in the recent past and are mainly a problem for pooping by people’s pools.
Championship round, lightweight division. Photo from Daffodil’s Photo Blog.
We periodically post pictures, videos and stories of male anoles duking it out with each other [e.g., 1,2], but over on Daffodil’s Photo Blog is evidence that such squabbling starts at a young age. Check out how the little fellas, with barely a dewlap to speak of, nonetheless behave just the same as their elders.
Last week, Yoel Stuart and colleagues (including me) published a paper demonstrating that green anoles had rapidly (ca. 20 years) evolved an increase in toepad size as a result of upward shifts in habitat use caused the presence of brown anoles.
The Discovery Institute, an organization devoted to the advocacy of creationist views, posted a blog yesterday saying, basically, “this is not news?” After summarizing the study, here’s what they have to say:
“….these scientists found that when a new species of lizards invaded another’s territory (in fact the new species was placed there intentionally by the researchers, meaning they weren’t quite studying “natural” selection), the old one sought higher ground. That seems like a smart thing to do. To go along with the new territory, they subsequently evolved “larger toepads (see here for a picture).
After reading this, what I really wanted to see was the precise sizes of the toepad and compare the changes. But alas that information is not in the paper. I tried downloading the supplemental materials but it’s not there either. So let’s assume that the toepad size changed a lot. What have we shown?
Not much. We’ve seen that the size of lizard feet can change in response to invaders’ driving a species to perch at higher levels in the trees. No new traits arose. Only the size of a pre-existing trait changed. Again, that’s interesting but such changes in the size of lizard feet do very little to explain the origin of lizards in the first place, even if these changes happen in just a few generations.
If we take seriously the statement from the authors that the modest results from this study can help test “evolutionary hypotheses about phenomena … on time scales too long for direct observation,” then that implies that over long periods you might be able to change the size of an organism or some of its body parts. Since when is that news?”
Not many anoles have blue dewlaps, so we were delighted to see Ann Stafford’s tweet of this lovely conspersus from Grand Cayman strutting its stuff.
Anole eggs found in a tomato pot. Photo by Karen Cusick.
The egg-laying habits of anoles are surprisingly little known. On Daffodil’s Photo Blog, Karen Cusick recently reported on the discovery of eight–count ’em, eight!–anole eggs in a tomato plant pot. Readers, where else have you found anole eggs?
Also, whose eggs are these? Both green and brown’s occur in Karen’s backyard. In Anolis Newsletter V, Todd Vincent provided tips on how to tell them apart.
Brown and green anole eggs. Photo by Todd Vincent.
And for some delightful footage on baby anoles, let’s not forget this old post.
A recent paper by Matt Helmus, Luke Mahler, and Jonathan Losos highlighted the ways in which globalization has influenced the distribution of Caribbean Anolis lizards. At the heart of this research was the relationship between commercial shipping traffic and lizard biogeography. Two more recent observations can now extend these findings well beyond the Caribbean, much, much farther north.
First, Twitter user Vlen Puppehface recently posted a story about a stow away green anole that he found on pallet in Edmonton, Canada. This was a shipment of oil field supplies that originated in Houston, TX and that took ten days to reach its destination. This male green anole survived the trip all the way to Canada and is now housed in a new terrarium. The tweet originally posted October 16th and since then the anole has shed and appears to have adapted well to its new home.
The Canadien green anole.
Photo by Randi Duun
In separate case of stowaway lizards, another anole survived a transatlantic journey to Denmark in a shipment of bananas and was discovered incapacitated on the floor of the stockroom where incoming bananas are fumigated. The photo is too small for me to be certain, but this appears to be an Anolis cybotes female. According to the original post by Randi Duun in the “Anoles” Facebook group, the shipment originated in Colombia, Costa Rica, or the Dominican Republic so this would be consistent with an A. cybotes hitchhiker. It would be interesting to know how long a shipment like this takes, but I bet that it is longer than ten days port-to-port. Regardless, just like the globetrotting green anole, this anole is healthy following its journey, housed in a terrarium and enjoying Danish mealworms.
In contrast to the research described by Helmus et al, it is probably safe to assume that despite the perseverance of these anoles, and any others that make their way towards the arctic circle in subsequent shipments, escapees will not be establishing viable introduced populations.
Anolis phyllorhinus. Photo by Bret Whitney
Anolis dissimilis. Photo by Paulo Melo Sampaio
In a fascinating new paper, Ivan Prates and colleagues report on a phylogenetic analysis of Amazonian Dactyloa clade anoles with implications for a number of important topics in anole evolution.
The authors generated new mitochondrial and nuclear gene data for many Amazonian Dactyloa and combined those data with existing data from previous studies. Of particular note was inclusion of Anolis dissimilis, until recently known from only a single locality, and the Amazonian horned anole, Anolis phyllorhinus.
The paper had four main results, which I’ll go through seriatim. First, the overall phylogeny is very much in accord with Castañeda and de Queiroz’s previous work. The biggest difference is that A. dissimilis occurs in a distinct clade with A. neblinus and A. calimae. A relationship between the latter two species had been suggested by the previous work; A. dissimilis had not been included in those studies. The three species have quite disjunct geographic distributions (Amazonia, western Colombia, and the tepuis of the Guiana Shield, so finding them to comprise a distinct clade is interesting.
Anolis punctatus. You can almost see a horn ready to burst forth from the tip of that snout. Photo by Arthur Georges.
Second, as the figure below illustrates, A. phyllorhinus, as expected, groups with A. punctatus, whereas A. proboscis groups with the phenacosaurs (heterodermus group; though A. proboscis is not actually included in the analysis because genetic samples were not available; however, recent studies clearly indicate that A. proboscis belongs with this clade). Prates et al. note that, other than the horn, A. phyllorhinus and A. punctatus are morphologically very similar. I’ll take that one step further–you can almost imagine the antecedents of the horn as a swelling on the tip of the snout of A. punctatus. And, in addition, note that the horns of the two-horned species are very different-looking. Although Williams placed them in the species group, he did note that they actually didn’t look at that much alike. We now know that he was correct in this observation–hornedness is a convergent trait in anoles (no, I’m not calling it horniness).
Third, Prates et al. calculated divergence times, calibrated with three fossils that can be confidently placed in iguanian phylogeny.
Regular readers of Anole Annals may remember the “Find the Anole” series that has been popular over the last few years. It has been a while since we enjoyed such fun times, so I wanted to breathe new life into this classic challenge.
Earlier today I visited Dinosaur World in Plant City, Fl. and enjoyed the contrast between Mesozoic and Cenozoic reptile diversity. It was very exciting. Below are two images from their grounds for your enjoyment. Can you find and identify the anoles in these photos? A far bigger challenge may be to identify the dinosaurs illustrated by these statues.
Find and identify the anole.
On a separate note, if you are ever passing through central Florida with your families, stop by Dinosaur World. The interpreters were quite good with our kids, there are over 200 life-sized (and colorful) dinosaur statues, they clearly state that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and there are no humans riding dinosaurs. I was pleasantly surprised by all of this in this part of the country. Its worth a few hours of your time!
Find the anole and identify the species.
Posted by Lorie on Birds and Blooms.