Category: All Posts Page 145 of 153

: Brown anoles mating.

Most invasive vertebrates have a high reproductive rate, and are able to build up a large population under ideal conditions. A recently published report on the reproductive cycle of the brown anole (Anolis sagrei) in Taiwan highlights this again.

This study demonstrated that the reproductive cycle of the Anolis sagrei population in Taiwan is long and cyclic, and that it is very similar to that of conspecific populations in Belize, Cuba, Florida, and Hawaii.

We found that as in Florida, the females become sexually mature at about 34 mm SVL. As in other studies, we found that Anolis sagrei females produces multiple clutches, consisting of a single egg, throughout most of the year, and that due to sperm storage, are able to produce viable eggs for a few weeks, even in the absence of males.

Unlike in other studies, we found that the males could be sexually mature at a much smaller SVL (ca. 30 mm), and that at least some males with spermatozoa, which could mate, are present throughout the year. The smaller SVL of the males mean a shorter time from hatching to the age at which mating can commence. And even though it is uncertain that such males would be able to compete with larger territorial males, these smaller males would certainly have mating opportunities in the absence of larger males in founder populations.

We found that the hatchlings have a SVL of about 18 mm, and as in other studies, they hatch after a period of about 30 days.

In view of the potential for A. sagrei taking over new territories, to prevent future introductions of this species, we strongly feel that drastic steps are merited.

Happy Birthday, ANSP!

By Anthony J Geneva

On March 21, 2012

In All Posts

The Centenary celebration at the Academy of Natural Sciences... The bicentenary will be a far less formal affair.

Two hundred years ago today a group of seven prominent Philadelphians: two physicians, a dentist, an apothecary, a manufacturing chemist, a distiller and naturalist Thomas Say formally founded the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, the first natural history museum in North American. Today and for the next year the Academy will hold events celebrating its long history of contribution to natural history research.

Over the past 200 years the Academy has played a continuing role in advancing natural history research from the myriad contributions of entomologist/malacologist/ herpetologist Thomas Say, to Ruth Patrick‘s work testing the predictions MacArthur and Wilson‘s theory of island biogeography, and Ted Daeschler’s co-discovery and analysis of transitional fish-tetrapod fossils. This being Anole Annals, read on for a summary of the Academy’s contributions to the anole world…

The Old Man and the Lizard: Hemingway’s Anole

By JHanken

On March 19, 2012

In All Posts

Can someone please identify this lizard to species? Is it an anole?

The preserved lizard, and the bat next to it, are sitting on a shelf in Ernest Hemingway’s bathroom, which I visited this past January. (Okay, I visited his estate and former home near Havana, Cuba, but you can’t actually step inside the house so I had to take the photograph–with my iPhone–through the open bathroom window.)

As everyone knows, Hemingway was a consummate sportsman, fisherman and hunter. He especially was a fan of big game; many trophy heads of large African mammals decorate the walls of his living room. Surely, however, there is no bigger game than the giant lizard shown here. I presume that it was taken on his estate, but as far as I can tell there is no collecting tag or other kind of identifying label and nobody whom I asked could shed any additional light. Indeed, no one else whom I was with had even noticed the two prize specimens sitting in adjacent jars.

For more information about the estate, look here: <http://www.hemingwaycuba.com/finca-la-vigia.html>.

Thanks very much.

Crowdsourcing Anole Dewlap Photos

By Travis Ingram

On March 11, 2012

In All Posts, New Research

I come to you, anologists of the world, with a request for your photos of anole dewlaps. I’m planning a study of dewlap size evolution across the Anolis phylogeny, but there’s not much data available for many of the less common species. I know many anole-hunters take pictures of their quarry with dewlaps extended after catching them, so I thought I’d try to extract data (e.g. dewlap length and area) from a collection of photos. If you have photos you might be able to share, please read on, and feel free to contact me if you have questions.

Requirements:

-The photo should show a live, adult male caught in the wild. Its dewlap should be fully extended – ideally either of its own volition or with tweezers, but fingers are ok as long as at least 90% of the dewlap area is visible.

-The anole’s entire head should be in the photo (so I can scale dewlap size relative to head size). If there’s a ruler or object of known length in the photo that’s even better.

-The photo should be close to a side-view profile (give or take no more than about 10 degrees angle in any direction).

-At a minimum, identify the species and the approximate location (country or island). Please do include any extra information you can share (e.g. date, latitude/longitude/altitude, snout-vent length of anole, weather…), but I know this may not be available for all the photos.

Clearly I’m new to this – any photo better than this one should be useable.
Check out the comments section of this post for some better examples.

If you have one or more suitable photos you can contribute, please send them to me as an attachment to an e-mail. If you have large files or many photos (more than ~5MB) that may not make it through e-mail servers, drop me a line and I’ll send you a link to a Dropbox folder instead. If you are willing to give permission to use the photo (with full credit, of course) in potential blog posts, web pages (e.g. Encyclopedia of Life entries), or publications, please say so in the e-mail; otherwise I will only use the photos to extract basic measurements.

Oldie But Goodie: Anolis on the Cover of National Geographic

By Jonathan Losos

On March 10, 2012

In All Posts

Lot of talk on this site about the deserved prevalence of anoles on the cover of major periodicals (most recently here). I thought it might be useful to remember what I consider to be the greatest anole cover of all time. The answer, incidentally, is “no.” And the species? Anolis garmani from Jamaica.

The Hi-Tech World of Anole Paleontology

By Emma Sherratt

On March 6, 2012

In All Posts, Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree

Previously, I reviewed what we currently know about anole fossils – these fossils are preserved in amber, a fossilised tree sap/resin from Mexico and the Dominican Republic (like the one pictured right). Today, I want to share how I have been using high resolution x-ray computed tomography, a.k.a CT scanning to look at these fossils and so peer into the past.

Background to CT scanning Amber

CT scanning involves x-raying an object from many angles, and then compiling these x-rays to reconstruct 3D models of the object (more detailed description here). CT scanning works when the object being scanned is made of different materials that each absorb x-rays differently. Think of a medical x-ray; skin absorbs far fewer x-rays than bone, so the two show up as different shades of grey on the developed x-ray.

The inclusions in amber are usually subfossils, where organic material still remains (e.g., bone).

Year Of The Lizard Poster Features Beautiful Anolis Grahami

By Jonathan Losos

On March 2, 2012

In All Posts

Don’t think I’ve ever seen one this shade of turquoise. Anyone know where it’s from?

As we all know, 2012 has been designated the Year of the Lizard. To stay up-to-date on lizardy festivities, as well as to stay abreast of issues in lizard conservation, consult http://www.parcplace.org/news-a-events/year-of-the-lizard.html. The poster can be downloaded at that site as well.

Dactyloa ID

By Joe Burgess

On February 28, 2012

In All Posts

I received this image from a friend of mine living in Panama. He asked me to identify the anole pictured for him. My immediate response back to him was Anolis insignis. However after looking at the animal I started to doubt my identification… the gular color seems to have too much yellow. I know that several of the Dactyloa group have been recently described, so this is possibly something new?

The photo is from Altos del Maria, cloud forest, a little east of El Valle, Panama.

Anyone dispute my ID? If so, what do you think?

CSI Luquillo: Cold Case or Hot Pursuit? Is Climate Change Affecting Puerto Rican Lizards?

By Brad Lister

On February 27, 2012

In All Posts

Three years ago I received a message from Ray Huey asking me if I’d be interested in collaborating on an NSF grant to return to Puerto Rico and replicate the studies on Anolis thermal biology and ecology that we had conducted during the 1970s. The idea was to have the original investigators, including Ray, myself, and Paul Hertz, work in the same study areas, utilize the same techniques, and document changes that had occurred over the past 35-40 years. Our ultimate goal was to understand the impact of climate warming on Anolis populations over a range of habitats, from the Luquillo rainforest in northeastern Puerto Rico to the Guanica dry forest in the southwestern corner of the island.

We eventually received NSF funding for the project, and to date I have carried out field work in Luquillo and Guanica during July 2011 and January 2012. Andres Garcia, my long term colleague from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, joined me in Puerto Rico as a co-investigator on the grant. At the Luquillo study site, we successfully repeated all phases of the research I conducted in July 1976 and January 1977 (Lister, B. C. 1981. Seasonal niche relationships of rainforest anoles. Ecology 62(6):1548-1560). The major components of this study were (1) a July and January census of forest dwelling anoles (A. gundlachi, A. evermanni, and A. stratulus) (2) measurements of perch heights, perch diameters, and perch site insolation (3) recording of body temperatures for all forest species (4) sweep samples of the forest understory during both the winter and summer seasons (5) collection of male and female A. gundlachi for subsequent scoring of reproductive condition and stomach content analysis.

Comparison of our results with those of my previous study indicate significant changes in all of the above areas.

Information on Anolis Maynardi (AKA The Little Cayman Green Anolis)

By Pat Shipman

On February 17, 2012

In All Posts, Natural History Observations, Notes from the Field

My husband and I are retired professors living part-time on Little Cayman, so we have come to know both A. sagrei and A. maynardi fairly well. Due to the dearth of information on the latter, we’re posting whatever we’ve got in hopes it helps someone or inspires someone. We have one, a large male, who sleeps most night on a ledge on the inside of our screen porch (he comes in a gap under the door). He goes to bed about 5:30-6 and wakes up around 8 am.

Anolis who sleeps on top of screen door frame

He is very regular in his habits & quite territorial — we watched him chase a smaller green anolis out of his sleeping ledge with much head bobbing and charges and this morning he smacked into another large male who had the affrontery to be sitting on his deck outside the screen porch! The other male either jumped off the deck or moved quickly to be underneath the deck.

We attach a few photos of two maynardi mating yesterday. Total encounter time was about 6 minutes.