As Martha Muñoz reported two months ago, the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology meetings, beginning Thursday in San Francisco, will be awash with anole research. Check out the list of talks here, the full story in Martha’s post, and stay tuned for updates from ‘frisco.
Category: All Posts Page 134 of 149
Recently we posted the Poe lab’s guide to the hyperdiverse anole community of El Cope, Panama, which harbors 12 anole species. Only slightly less diverse is the community of anoles at Rio Palenque, Ecuador, which has 11 species, and the Poe team has put together a guide for this locality as well. A small version appears below, and the full size pdf can be accessed here.
As many readers have likely seen in recent news, original scientific research at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History is poised to take a major blow with the announcement that the museum is refocusing its scientific mission and will soon be scaling back its research activities. The Field is in serious financial trouble. In debt for the last decade and for years unable to balance its books, the institution has reached its borrowing limit and must find a way to resolve a 5 million dollar imbalance in its annual budget. For leadership through this growing crisis, the museum hired a new president and CEO, Richard Lariviere, who began his post in October. Last week, Lariviere and the museum’s board of trustees offered the first glimpse of their proposed solution: a 5 million dollar cut in annual operations expenditures, 3 million of which is to be shouldered by the museum’s science departments. Lariviere has stated that the Field plans to restructure its scientific mission, and that deep cuts in research staff – including the museum’s roster of tenured curators – could be expected. This is a scary prospect for the dozens of professional scientists who have built their careers at the museum, and very sad news for folks who, like me, took some of the first steps of their scientific careers there (I worked as a research assistant in the Division of Amphibians and Reptiles for a year after college; this experience shaped my decision to go to grad school, and led me to study lizard evolution!).
For the most part, the details of these upcoming changes have not been resolved, and will be the subject of internal deliberations in early 2013. Nonetheless, there are reasons for serious concern about the future of research at the Field. First, the museum is scrapping its four current research departments (Anthropology, Botany, Geology, and Zoology) in favor of a much leaner “Science and Education” department. In addition, a committee is currently taking preparatory legal steps necessary to lay off tenured curators, an action that is impossible under normal circumstances (to get this done, the museum must declare a state of financial exigency). These actions
Just found this on Twitter. http://t.co/tHk3ZQBN
People often stop me on the street to ask “how do you come up with so many great topics to post on?” The answer I give is one simple word: “Twitter.” If you want to stay on top of the anole world, there’s no better way than to see what Anole Nation is tweeting. Try it yourself and you’ll see that most new anole papers get mentioned, as well as news of all sorts, and all kinds of great photos and other anolillenea.
And other great stuff, too, like this great curse: “I hope you accidentally swallow an anole and choke on it.” As well as many touching human interest stories, such as this one: “Good Christ! I just went to get the mail from the box and a stupid Knight Anole lizard over a foot long jumped on my arm before bolting.”
How do I do it? I simply search on “anole” and “anolis”. There are some drawbacks, though. For example, it seems a lot of people don’t know how to spell “alone” or–I’m guessing here–“ahole”. So a bunch of the tweets don’t make a lot of sense. And how could I forget? All the tweets about the comic book character Anole, who’s exploits seem to be drawing an ever greater audience (as befits the world’s first gay superhero).
Detour on the information superhighway
And then there’s the bane of my twitter-life: some Japanese tweeters have incorporated “anole” or “anolis” into their twitternames, so periodically there’s a flood of banal tweets in Japanese to scroll through (ok, you got me, I don’t really know that they’re banal because, after all, they’re in Japanese–who knows, maybe they are important insights on anole taxonomy and biogeography). Plus, recently a dude named Ben with his address at “@anole” has started tweeting a ton of irrelevancies.
And, of course, there is some information that you’d rather not know about, like the oft-retweeted link to a disgusting video of a teenager biting a live anole in half and eating it.
It’s a brave new cyberworld out there, but if you want to keep your finger on the pulse of the ever changing anolosphere, Twitter’s the way to go. Unless there’s some new thing that’s better.
The 2013 Anole Annals Anole Calendar has been flying off the shelves, but a few remain, and for those of you savvy shoppers who’ve waited until after Christmas, now’s the time: Zazzle is offering 65% off through Friday. Never too late for a late holiday present! The order page is here; use the Discount code: GIFTSYOUWANT. Get yours before they’re all gone!
In response to many posts Anole Annals few weeks ago on the new classification proposed by Nicholoson and al., today the great website The Reptile Database updated the family Polychrotidae and applied the classification Nicholson with the eight genera.
52 species of Anolis
9 species of Audantia
9 species of Chamaelinorops
35 species of Ctenonotus
83 species of Dactyloa
20 species of Deiroptyx
169 species of Norops (the genus Chamaelinorops is included in the link)
11 species of Xiphosurus
Does this application mean that it has been approved by the scientific community?
The ReptileDatabase, an online listing of all species of reptiles, has just issued its latest update (Dec.24), and in it, has broken Anolis into eight genera following Nicholson et al.’s recent paper. Here’s what they have to say:
“Since the last database release 493 names have been added or have changed, including 62 new species, and 95 other changes such as elevations of subspecies to species status, resurrections, or simply changes in gender. The remaining 336 changes are changed Anolis names.
Anolis revision: The most notable change affected Anolis. We have preliminarily adopted the new Anolis names from Nicholson et al. (2012), even though these changes remain controversial. These authors split Anolis into 8 genera, among which Anolis now holds only 52 species. While this is phylogenetically more informative than a single large genus Anolis, it is unfortunately of limited use, if not confusing, due to unsatisfactory diagnoses of at least some of these new genera.”
Those of you who are long time readers of Anole Annals will remember our lengthy discussion of this proposed change earlier this fall. Readers interested in reliving the discussion might search using the term “Nicholson” to find the many posts on the topic.
The Reptile Database is relied upon by many online resources as the authoritative list of reptile species. As such, this decision will go far to gain widespread acceptance of this taxonomic revision. On the other hand, at least two papers are currently in press criticizing the paper and arguing against this taxonomic split. Stay tuned!
Artwork by Ryane Logsdon.
Steve Poe writes: “Several island sites are famous among anolologists for harboring multiple sympatric species. Soroa in Cuba, La Palma in the Dominican Republic, and El Yunque in Puerto Rico each have been well-studied by community ecologists. But many mainland sites are populated by anole communities that meet or exceed the diversity levels of these island sites. One such hyperdiverse mainland locality is El Cope in Panama. Twelve species of Anolis may be collected within 100 meters of the field house at El Cope.
Identification of mainland anoles can be difficult as there are fewer resources available relative to those for anoles in the Caribbean. We have produced two-panel powerpoint guides for El Cope that should aid in identification of anoles in and around these sites.”
Small versions are attached below and the full size version can be accessed here (be patient on the download–it’s a big file).
