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Last year was a banner year for anoles. As Xavier@evolutionistX tweeted at the end of the Norman, OK Evolution meetings: “The star of #evol11: Anolis lizards. They won both Fisher’s and Dobzhansky awards, would like to invite them to a celebrity party @NYC.” And who could blame him? The prestigious Dobzhansky and Fisher Awards both went to workers studying anoles, as did three of the four Young Investigators Prizes. And there were a slew of other excellent anole talks (reported on these pages last year; start at this post and work backwards, or search on “Evolution Meetings”). David Hembry summarized the meeting well on Nothing in Biology Makes Sense: “I confess, I didn’t go to the Evolution meetings for three years. I missed Minnesota in 2008 due to fieldwork, Idaho in 2009 due to illness, and Portland in 2010 due to the EAPSI. When I “returned” in 2011 in Norman, it was like everybody had switched to working on anoles and sticklebacks!” (see the rest of David’s insightful observations on this point below).

But can anoles do it again in this year’s meeting , slated to begin on Friday in Ottawa? You can rely on Anole Annals to be on hand to provide the play-by-play coverage from the spectacle of the opening ceremonies to the climactic closing mixer. And fear not: though not the grand slam of last year, anoles again will bring home some medal.

Here are the talks. Unfortunately, authors are not listed, but you can get all program information at the meeting’s program mobile app website:

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Now that the summer’s in full swing, and many of our readers are out in the field seeing our beloved anoles, it’s a good time to advertise for new contributors. And the next two weeks will be particularly good, because this correspondent will be far away, thinking of things other than blogging, so why not help pick up the slack?

Who can post? Anyone who has something to say about the biology, natural history, or amazing-ness of anoles (well, within reason–we leave anole husbandry and sales issues to other websites). And fear not–you’ll have an audience. Anole Annals is now routinely visited by 500-800 readers a day (this month’s average = 605/day).

Anole Annals is a good place to let the anole community know what you’re working on, like Brad Lister’s recent overview of his fascinating work on the status of Puerto Rican anoles. And, it’s a great way to spread word of your recently published work–why not provide a short precis or tell the backstory of how the paper came to be, like Simon Lailvaux recently did? It’s a great way of giving people the short story of what you’ve done and get them interested in reading the whole paper.

If you are fortunate to live in an anole-inhabited region, tell us about your local species, like Juan Salvador Mendoza’s recent post on the anoles of Colombia.

And it’s just a great place to ask a question, post a photo, or report an observation. We aim to make Anole Annals the clearinghouse for all things Anolis, the place that the anole community turns to for the exchange of information or ideas. To do so, we welcome–no, heartily encourage–contributions from anyone and everyone. Posting is easy, and really doesn’t take much time. Don’t overthink it–just post today!

Sofia Raudales, biologist and curator of the natural history museum of the National Autonomus University in Honduras, just sent these photos of an un-named anole captured in Honduras. I have a pretty strong hunch what they are, but since I’ve never been to Honduras, I thought I’d post the photos. If they are what I think they are, they were found where they’re not supposed to be. ID, anyone?

Maria Del Rosario Castañeda

We’ve had previous posts on new anole entries to the Encyclopedia of Life, the project that is attempting to create a webpage for every species of life on earth. Recently Rosario  Castañeda, whose work on anole phylogeny has been discussed previously, was appointed as an EOL Rubenstein Fellow with the goal of creating pages for the entire genus–a challenging endeavor for sure, and you can hear Rosario talk all about it, as well as about her research, on this newly released EOL podcast.

Anoland has a name-that-anole quiz. Here are the instructions, translated from French by an internet website: “Salvation to all, this is a new quiz. For each species a photo of the male as well as of the female (interesting to see the fanon and the difference of the latter as a function of sex) some very simple, others quite harsh.”

How else can you explain the fact that no one from either place has ever successfully logged onto Anole Annals? Surely, the populace there has tried, so clearly the governments are blocking us. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Check out the Map App on the right side of the page, which shows every location where someone has logged in (and don’t miss the real time rotating globe version–click on the “3D” link at the top of the page!).

It’s a pretty impressive map. Basically, just about the whole world has logged in. Regularly from the Gulf of Guinea. India, the Middle East, the far North, the Azores, Iceland, four different Hawaiian islands. You name it. Except New Guinea and the Galapagos. Even Madagascar logged on for the first time two days ago (I think they knew they were about to be singled-out). So I implore you, dear AA readers. Get on a plane, fly to those places, and log on. Please.

Anolis cristatellus on Necker Island, British Virgin Islands, which is owned by Richard Branson. Photo by Charlie Smith.

That’s right, that Richard Branson, the Virgin Group magnate. Check it out here.

Bora Zivkovic, Blog Editor at Scientific American, has named  Anole Annals “Blog of the Week.” Congratulations to us! Here’s what the very perceptive Zivkovic had to say on his site, A Blog Around the Clock:

“For the greatest portion of the history of biology, every organism was a “model organism.” One would pick a problem and then choose which organism would be most suited for answering those particular questions. Then, in the 1990s, everyone jumped onto the bandwagon of studying just a handful of organisms that could be genetically modified at the time: mouse, fruitfly, thale cress, zebrafish, African clawed frog, bread mold, brewer’s yeast, or E. coli. All the other organisms were all but abandoned, only studied by a small number of die-hard researchers and, increasingly, amateurs. Now that technology allows us to investigate (and to some extent manipulate) entire genomes of almost any species we’d like, researchers are going back and rediscovering the abandoned model organisms once again. One of these is Anolis, a large group of species of lizards, noted for their dewlaps, and known especially for their fast adaptive radiation on tropical islands.

And now there is a blog that covers everything about these lizards – Anole Annals. Posts are written both by veteran researchers and their students, from several laboratories, as well as other contributors. They cover both recent and historical papers on evolution, ecology, biogeography, behavior, physiology, biomechanics and genetics of this diverse group of reptiles. They also describe their own research, including anecdotes and adventures from field work, equipment they use in the lab, and successes in discovery. On top of that, they help people ID the species from pictures, pay attention to the appearance of anoles in art and in the popular culture and generally have a lot of fun doing all of this. A blog entirely devoted to just one group of animals sounds very ‘niche,’ but what they did was build a blog that has something for everyone and is a great fun (as well as insightful and educational) read for everyone.”

AA previously has had posts on the new project in Puerto Rico to examine the effect of global warming on anoles and other critters. Now the project has a spiffy new website, well worth a look.

Luisa Otero, a team member on the project, gives us the backstory:

“Almost a year ago I started working as a Research Assistant in a Project titled “Vulnerability of Tropical Ectotherms to Climate Warming.” Until then, I had been planning to do my master’s degree studying sex determination within nests of hawksbill sea turtles here in Puerto Rico. However, after spending almost a whole month during the summer in the field working with Dr. George Gorman, Prof. Raymond Huey, Prof. Bradford Lister, and Prof. Paul Hertz, I began to question my research interests…. And what can I say? I just fell for lizards!

The main aim of the lizard project is to evaluate whether climate warming here in Puerto Rico during the last decades has caused changes in the thermal biology, reproduction cycles, and ecological interactions of anoles.  The approach involves comparing contemporary field patterns with those collected during the 70’s and 80’s by the investigators mentioned above.

A couple of weeks ago we published a website with information about the project, and now we would like to share it with you all.  We will use this website to share our findings as well as those of related studies of tropical organisms.”

Anolis carolinensis from south Florida. Photo courtsey of Neil Losin

Anolis carolinensis, the slender green anole from the southern United States is no stranger to most readers of this blog. This species is a model system for reproductive biology (here), is an emerging model for studies of development and Evo-devo (here and here), and is the first squamate lizard with a sequenced and annotated genome (here and here). Anolis carolinensis is, however, only one member of a diverse clade of lizards, though the natural history of many of these species is poorly understood relative to their popular cousin. Furthermore, the vast majority of carolinensis anoles* are known from few museum specimens meaning that robust descriptions of their morphology remain difficult to obtain.

I have recently become interested in the carolinensis series (for reasons discussed below) and have set out to better understand their biology. This post is meant to introduce readers to the diversity of carolinensis anoles and to put out a call for additional information that may be out there. While I have searched the wires for literature on these species, the community may know of hidden gems that have otherwise eluded me.

1) Species diversity and biogeography

The 13 species of the carolinensis subgroup and their localities are listed in the table below. Though many of these species were described in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries the list continues to expand as Orlando Garrido and colleagues explore Cuban biodiversity, uncovering local variants to the more widespread species. Garrido has described four new species of Cuban green(ish) anole in the last 25 years and recent molecular analysis suggests that localized variation may be more common than previously appreciated. For example, Rich Glor and co-authors revealed several independently evolving lineages of A. porcatus that are correlated with Cuba’s geological history of partial island submergence (paper here).

The anoles of the carolinensis series. Specimen counts are based on a survey of the big five anole collections. Click to enlarge.

While several species are geographically widespread (A. porcatus, A. allisoni, and A. carolinensis***), the majority of this diversity evolved on relatively small Caribbean islands or in distinct regions of Cuba.

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