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Anthony Herrel, Rosario Castañeda and I are just back from a three-week trip to Colombia and Venezuela to collect data on the natural history of several little-known anole species. Unbeknownst to us, we were retracing the work of Harvard graduate student and naturalist extraordinaire Ken Miyata, who conducted similar—though more extensive, fieldwork on two of our focal species—A. (Phenacosaurus) heterodermus and A. onca in the 1970’s.

Fortunately, our South American colleagues were more knowledgeable than we are and pointed us to contributions in Anolis Newsletter II and III in which Miyata and Ross Kiester detailed their work and findings, which, alas, were never formally published. I’ll be reporting on what we saw, both here and in the Scientist at Work blog of the New York Times (first post this morning), but if you want to get up to speed, check out these reports. And, more generally, this indicates the wealth of important information available in the Anolis Newsletters, all six of which are available.

Lastly, a teaser: we’ll be hearing more about Ken Miyata in the next few months.

Today’s Island of the Day is actually a set of three islands that make up The Cayman Islands: Little Cayman, Grand Cayman, and Cayman Brac.

Little Cayman is a quiet little diving community with less than 100 residents, made up mostly of expats and people who run the hotels that host the tourists attracted by some of the best diving and snorkeling in the Caribbean. When I was there, we met some locals who gave us a tour of the island and we circumnavigated Little Cayman in about 20 minutes by car. We saw the endangered Cyclura caymanensis on the northern side of the island, in a spot where they congregate for tourists to feed them. As far as Anolis go, Little Cayman has Anolis maynardi, a very long-snouted green anole. They also have a red-dewlapped population of Anolis sagrei that Jason Kolbe showed is more closely related to populations of A. sagrei on Cuba than they are to populations of red-dewlapped A. sagrei on Grand Cayman.

The Western arm of Grand Cayman, the biggest island, feels a little bit like South Beach in Miami, with expensive resort hotels, boutique shopping, and a rocking beach and nightlife scene. As you go farther east, you find the the classic Caribbean dry forests growing among the karst outcroppings. The endangered Grand Cayman Blue Iguana, Cyclura lewisi, has a remnant population in and around the botanical gardens on the east end of the island. This species is not blue like Anolis gorgonae but it does have a bluish-green sheen depending on how the light hits it.

The Grand Cayman Blue Iguana
(photo from the Wikipedia page)

Anolis conspersus is notable on Grand Cayman – it is related to A. grahami from Jamaica but has evolved a beautiful purplish-blue dewlap, very different from A. grahami’s yellow dewlap.

Cayman Brac feels like Little Cayman, except that it is bigger, has a few population centers, and is dominated by a bluff that grows from nothing in the west to a towering 150 feet in the east. During hurricanes, people living on Cayman Brac used to climb up to and take refuge in caves that weave back into the bluff. We spent some time on Brac looking for a cryptic invasion of Anolis sagrei sagrei into the endemic Anolis sagrei luteosignifer population. That project is ongoing in the lab. It was fun to work there and we met many friendly people.

For more on Cayman herps, check out: CaribHerp.org.

Time for some geographical Jeopardy.

The answer is: The highest point in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The question is: What is Mount Scenery?

At a towering 870m, the active volcano Mt. Scenery on the island of Saba (pronounced say-buh), is the correct response. Saba is an island near St. Kitts and St. Barts in the Lesser Antilles and is the smallest special municipality of the Netherlands. At only 5 sq. miles (13 sq. km), it doesn’t have too many people (1,824 in 2001) or terrestrial herps (7). Of those herps, only one is endemic to Saba, and that is, of course, an anole – Anolis sabanus! You can find more information on the rest of the Saban herps at Caribherp.org.

It’s that time again, time to invite/implore AA readers to contribute posts. All are welcome. Have any interesting questions about anole biology, cool photos? Want to comment on a recent (or not-so-recent) paper of interest? Or tell us about your research plans or results? Anole Annals is a forum for all of these, and anything else anole-related. And now’s a particularly good time, as your trusted correspondent is leaving the country for several weeks. Fear not, there will be reports from the field, but it’s a good time for contributions from any and all! If you’ve never posted before, it’s easy, and instructions can be found here or contact the AA Editorial Offices at anoleannals@gmail.com.

Who is this Uwe Bartelt, who has ferreted out such a surprisingly large number of anole postage stamps? Well, you can read all about him. Especially if you read German. And if you do, please give us more details. The photos make clear that he’s got a great setup for anole husbandry, with all kinds of cool anoles. Check it out. And translate it!

The website WTF Evolution has been popping up around the ecology and evolution blogosphere lately. It was recently featured by Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution is True and by Jeremy Fox at Dynamic Ecology. However, if you don’t read either of these blogs, or haven’t heard about the site, I suggest having a look – it’s pretty funny (especially ‘Fiddler crab’). Best of all, however, is that anoles are featured (and they’re the only organism to get a video)! The example is one featured on Anole Annals previously and is from a study by Casey Gilman in Duncan Irschick’s lab. The video shows that when anoles jump from springy perches, the recoiling perch can hit them in the tail, throwing them off balance. As the captionist at WTF Evolution notes, not a great thing for a lizard that spends a lot of time on branches: “Great work, Evolution“.

Photo by Chuck Horne

I certainly was not expecting to see this so soon! According to the breeder, these anoles were only 3-4 months old when I received them last month (December 4th). Unfortunately, I did not take SVL measurements at first but they have certainly grown in the 1.5 months I’ve had them (the male seemingly more so than the female). I’ve placed a “nest box” in the enclosure with a commercial, tropical blend soil medium and I will check it for suitable “dampness” periodically in the hopes it makes an acceptable laying site. I’d appreciate any advice AA members may have to increase my chances of successfully incubating eggs and raising the babies. I’ll post updates periodically.

Missing anoles? Or missing anole biogeographers?

As you may (or may not) know, the 6th meeting of the International Biogeography Society (IBS) is underway in Miami, FL.

So here I am, in the anole invasion capital of the world, with the Caribbean on the doorstep, and a look through the conference program reveals a paltry TWO talks on our favourite lizards. Contrast this with Martha Munoz’s reports from SICB, with 18 (or so) anole talks. Of course, there’s something to be said for quality over quantity and the two anole presentations here do a good job of flying the flag. Yesterday Jonathan Losos kicked off one of the symposia with a talk on anole traits, function and biogeography (with a smashing blue / yellow colour scheme), and later today I’ll be searching out a poster on anole fossil assemblages (post forthcoming)

Nonetheless, I still can’t help wonder, where are the anole biogeographers? You can’t look through a text on island biogeography, species area curves or adaptive radiation without finding a dewlap. So the question is, are people not doing anole biogeography anymore? This isn’t the case, so it can only be that either the IBS isn’t on the radar, or people choose not to go. Either way, you’re missing out on a great meeting – it’s an excellent opportunity for the anole research community to radiate and reach a slightly different audience.