The meetings kick off tonight in stinkin’ hot Norman, Ok. From the program guide, here are the anole-themed talks. Can’t attend? Fear not–AA will keep you abreast of events as they unfold.
Sunday, 2:45 P.M. University A, Cox, Robert, Urbach, Davnah, Duryea, M.C., Calsbeek, Ryan. Testing the adaptive significance of progeny sex-ratio bias in the brown anole lizard, Anolis sagrei.
Andrea Barragán Forero [andreabarragan10@hotmail.com] is working with A. concolor and A. pinchoti from the collection of the National University of Colombia. She is investigating whether the species are sexually dimorphic in size and shape, and if their morphology is similar to the Greater Antillean ecomorphs. Her work is entitled: Diversificación morfológica de Anolis solitarios: Anolis concolor y Anolis pinchoti de las islas de San Andrés, Providencia y Santa Catalina, Colombia.
Andrea could really use a photograph of a live A. pinchoti. If you can help her, please email her.
Really, I’m not a paid flak for the Leal lab, but there’s some more cool videos posted today on chipojolab. This time, there are two videos of brown anoles foraging. The first is an anole down in the intertidal, munching on a small invertebrate. The second is one up in the bushes, trying–without success–to gobble down a red berry.
From today’s edition of Chipojolab. Go there to see the video:
“The head-bob displays of anoles have been studied for decades. In the early 1970’s, Tom Jenssen’s pioneering work began to unravel the intricacies of these motion signals. This work was followed by research conducted by Leo Fleishman (A.K.A. “Jefesisimo”), who elegantly demonstrated that head-bobs are designed to be conspicuous against background vegetation movement. Dave’s research is building upon the work of Tom and Leo by evaluating the plasticity of head-bobs, along with possible mechanisms that anoles might employ to increase the likelihood of being detected by conspecifics. Today’s video illustrates one such mechanism: note (in slow motion) how the anole is pushing so vigorously with his forelimbs that both limbs leave the perch! This behavior results in extremely high amplitude displays, which should be easily detected by conspecifics.”
Sum, sum, summertime, and Anole Annals readers of all stripes are out there, finding and studying anoles. Why not tell us what you’re seeing and doing? Observations, anecdotes, photographs, descriptions of research projects–the anole world needs to know! Or comment on a new paper, or an old one that made an impression. Or any other aspect of anoliana that comes to mind. Anole Annals welcomes posts on all matters anoline.
In it’s brief existence, AA has already published posts by 21 authors, and many more have commented. Why don’t you join the team? Information on how to post is available here.
p.s. Bonus points to anyone who can name the species above.
p.p.s. Thanks to Melissa Woolley for constructing the image above.
The Brodie Lab at the University of Virginia has developed a manual for breeding and raising anoles in lab colonies, entitled “Anolis Colony Care: A manual developed for the Brodie laboratory at University of Virginia.”
With the genome of green anole available for download, anole researchers are apt to face a dilemma related to both experimental design and the taste and judgment of science consumers. My colleagues and I recently published an article in Genome Biology and Evolution in which the anole genome was downloaded for analyses. Spearheaded by bioinformatics guru Charles Chapus, our experiments were conducted in silico. Through conversations with friends and colleagues, we intuited that we might face resistance to our methods because, although our hypotheses and analyses were novel, our raw data were not. Fortunately, this concern, held by some, did not postpone publication of our work, but it did raise an interesting point for discussion. Where is genomic research going, in relation to generation and/or analysis of sequence data? From the perspective of experimental design, the decision to generate new sequence depends on the research question. For population genetics studies, for example, novel sequence generation is efficacious but for whole genome comparisons, why repeat what is freely available for download?
Have you published work based on pre-existing data? How will you decide whether to amplify or download anole sequences for analyses?
Here are three photographs I took of brown anoles preying on lepidopterans. In our diet studies lepidopterans were one of the main prey types, although, as can be expected, the larvae outnumbered the adults as prey. Amazingly, the lizards even ate larvae that had hair, which would cause an irritating burning sensation if it comes in contact with your skin.
The University of California Museum of Paleontology has a wonderful website on evolution education, including a number of classroom exercises. One of these focuses on using phylogeny to understand the evolution of the Greater Antillean ecomorphs.
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