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Photojournalist, anole aficionado and AA has devoted yesterday’s post to the goings-on of her local brown anoles. Check it out Daffodil’s Photo Blog.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR_byRbXxvs

Anole researcher Anthony Herrel showed his true colors recently in a seminar when he said that chameleons are cooler than anoles. Be that as it may, this video is a fun demonstration of the amazing traits that make chameleons the second coolest lizards. It’s part of the “True Facts” series of videos, which are quite entertaining–one episode on tarsiers was featured in a recent AA post.

Here’s a disturbing photo that came across Facebook the other day. And I always thought these katydids seemed like delightful, gentle forest nymphs. Who knew they could be vicious killers. This comes from The Biodiversity Group’s Facebook page, but I couldn’t locate the image on their website, though I didn’t look that hard. They identify the anole as A. princeps but don’t provide any further information.

Males and females of many species vary in their morphology, behavior, and physiology. Whether exaggerated weapons, elaborate coloration patterns, or dramatic differences in size, these sexual dimorphisms form some of the most eye-catching elements of biological diversity. These striking differences are often considered as a product of sexual selection, whether due to direct female choice for an elaborate structure or traits used by combative males to assert dominance. But additional patterns of dimorphism become visible with quantitative comparisons of male and female body proportions, which may yield additional clues to ecological differences between the sexes. Considering that patterns of sexual dimorphism can diverge rapidly among species it is no surprise that they have intrigued biologists since before Darwin.

Anolis brunneus from Crooked Island, Bahamas. A member of the carolinensis clade of anoles exhibiting extreme levels of facial length dimorphism.The male is the large lizard to the bottom left, the female to the upper right.

According to Ze Frank, this screen capture shows the cover of the children’s book “Lizard Has A ****** Day.”

If you’re not already familiar with Comedian Ze Frank’s True Facts Series, you need to check them out. Frank interweaves interesting facts about wildlife with hilariously (off)color commentary. He’s done videos on everything from star-nosed moles to dung beetles (I was first alerted of the series by a comment made by Tracy Heath over at the new Treethinkers blog). I was recently viewing True Facts About The Tarsier, and was shocked to see this puny little Southeast Asian quasi-monkey feeding on one of my favorite lizards. At around 1:26 into this video, Frank notes that the Tarsier is “the only entirely carnivorous primate, eating insects, rodents, reptiles and small birds. This incidentally is the cover of the children’s book “Lizard Has A ****** DAY.” Very funny. Of course, its practically impossible that a tarsier in nature would be feeding on what appears to be a  green anole (Anolis carolinensis). As far as I’m aware A. carolinensis is not been reported from any of the Southeast Asian islands occupied by the tarsier. Thus, if there’s we’ve learned from this video, it is that this lizard is having a ****** day because somebody just thrust it into the waiting arms of a captive tarsier.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jz0JcQYtqo

The saga continues. Last December, the Reptile Database, the online listing of all recognized reptile species, issued an update in which anoles were split into the eight genera proposed by Nicholson et al. Now, in the subsequent update released yesterday, they’ve done an about-face and changed all anoles back to Anolis. Here’s what they have to say:

“Anolis. After serious contemplation (and consultation with several experts) we changed the names of anoles back to Anolis. For some reasons see Poe et al. (2013) Zootaxa 3626 (2): 295–299.”

Interestingly, the very next item was this:

“Teiidae. The names of many teiids have changed following the suggestions of  Harvey et al. (2012) Zootaxa 3459: 1–156. However, we are already getting complaints that this may not be tenable…”

So, seems like these issues may not necessarily be unique to anoles. The Reptile Database is a great resource for the herpetological community, but I don’t envy it the task of trying to decide when to change names and when not to. Moreover, since it has become so widely used, its decisions probably have an outsized impact on whether people adopt proposed changes or not.

In any case, for any readers who need to get up to speed, the Poe et al. paper referred to above was discussed several weeks ago, and the entire discussion thread on the proposed taxonomy of Nicholson et al. is probably best found by searching with the term “Nicholson” in the search bar to the right.

AA reader Ava writes: “Ironic that on Easter, I found myself on an egg hunt and found a green anole egg that I suspected had just been laid.  She would have laid it last night.  I put it in a cricket keeper (covered big holes), included the very soil the egg had been laid in and placed the keeper back in the main terrarium in the area where I had found it.

I read, afterward, that the position of the egg should not be disturbed. I fear I may have shifted it around in transfer. Have I blown it? Can one tell which end is up?

I live in Florida where the ‘takeover’ of the brown Bahamian anoles has been increasingly apparent.  The ‘greenies’ as we call them have taken to the trees, but seem fewer every year.  The browns are so aggressive. My hope is to ‘repopulate’ a certain mango tree where we used to see them. Pointless?  Anyone?

Haiti has some spectacular anoles found nowhere else. For example, if you go to CaribHerp and click on “Haiti” in left toolbar, you see the 176 species of herps in the country. Then click filter by “Dactyloidae” and you see the 32 recognized anole species.

13 of those are endemic to the country, but there are quite a few in the works (not yet described). One beautiful endemic Haitian species, Anolis monticola, is on the cover of Jonathan’s book “Lizards in an evolutionary tree.” Deforestation continues, with only 1% forest cover remaining, so almost everything will be disappearing soon.

For several years I’ve been doing some intense field work in Haiti, and professional photographers have joined on the trips. In collaboration with the Audubon Society of Haiti (Philippe Bayard, president), we put together a large biodiversity calendar for this year, with text translated in 3 languages. It opens into a 24″ x 12″ poster. Anoles are on the cover and a month is mostly devoted to anoles. After some unexpected delay they have arrived and we’re happy to give them away, for cost of shipping/packing. If interested, see Caribnature for images of the calendar, and instructions to order:

Tess Driessens, but that’s no lizard

Channel 27 in Grand Cayman has just aired a report on the doctoral work of Tess Driessens (co-winner of the 2012 Anole Photo contest!) and Simon Baeckens (actually, from their webpages, this seems like Tess’s project). They’re studying the diversity of dewlap color in Anolis sagrei by looking at brown anoles throughout their range.