Category: All Posts Page 144 of 153

This post serves as a lighthearted response to Jonathan’s earlier announcement and as an advertisement – perhaps endorsement – for some of the upcoming anole talks at Evolution 2012.

In his post Jonathan highlights recent comments by David Hembry that describe the blossoming of anoles into “field model organisms,” the ecological parallel of chicks, mice, and Drosophila which have long histories in laboratory studies. While the importance of anoles for Evolutionary Ecology is almost without question, I think that this stops short of describing the present and undeniable future of anole research. From my perspective, the roots of Anolis research are strong and wide, but its flower(s) has not yet fully blossomed.

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Day’s Edge Production in full swing

The guys at Day’s Edge Productions keep on chugging along. Their latest offering is the first video report from their Italian island lizard project, studying the incredible variation of   wall lizards found on tiny Spanish islands. What makes this video worth checking out for anolistas is the incredible abundance and audacity of the lizards, which crawl right over the actors as the camera rolls. Anyone ever seen anoles that daring?

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.”