Category: Notes from the Field Page 20 of 22

from Michele Johnson:

Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to join one of my colleagues, mammalogist David Ribble, in the data collection for a vertebrate biodiversity survey he’s working on at Bamberger Ranch in Johnson City, Texas.  (Incidentally, David is a grad school pal of Jonathan Losos – it’s always a small world.)  We trapped rodents, checked pitfall traps, lifted cover boards, and jumped out of the truck when we saw snakes in the road.  This was my first experience trapping mammals, and I was impressed by the many similarities, and the important differences, between field studies of rodents and anoles.

This is not an anole. It’s a Peromyscus pectoralis from Bamberger Ranch, with a fresh ear tag.

The similarities:

1.  When you grab an animal, it pees on you.

2. If you don’t hold on tight, the animal gets away.  (The perils of working with students…)

3. If you don’t hold on right, you get bitten.

4. When you catch males, you confirm the sex by everting the penes.

5. Tails can come off – oops!

6. We all pose our specimens in unnatural positions.  (Mice get a “Superman flying” pose; anoles a “mid-jumping jack” pose.)

7. Field work is better with beer.

The differences:

1. You can lure mice into little traps using food.  It would be awfully convenient if anoles fell for such a trick.

2. If an anole bites your finger, you can blow on its face until it lets go.  If a mouse bites your finger, you bleed all over everything.

3. Male mice only have one penis, poor guys.

4. If takes way more work to make a mouse specimen than an anole specimen – you have to skin it, stuff it, and pin it.  I prefer fixation with nasty chemicals.

Assuming my lists are exhaustive, it’s clear that the study of anoles has more similarities than differences with the study of their amniotic brethren.  Still, I think I’ll stick with anoles.

PS – For those of you wondering, the rodents we trapped were Sigmodon hispidus (cotton rat) and Peromyscus pectoralis (white-ankled mouse), and the herps we caught were Sceloporus undulatus, Acris crepitans blanchardi, and Thamnophis proximus.  It was very cold that weekend.

A female and male Anolis gemmosus, photo by Luke Mahler

Last summer in Mindo, Ecuador, we found several pairs of Anolis gemmosus sleeping in very close proximity to each other, but not overlapping like Kat observed with Anolis etheridgei (earlier post). The pairs were always facing the same direction and the pairs were made up of any combination of males and females.  To be fair, we also saw many sleeping alone, and the area was densely populated with A. gemmosus. Unfortunately, our dedicated pursuit of Anolis proboscis kept us from making detailed observations. Random coincidence or something more?

Is this really worth it? I was asking myself while trying to balance my weight on the slanted old tree which I had climbed, the mountain stream beneath me gurgling around glistening rocks in the humid night. I stretched out my left arm as far as possible while clinging onto the tree with my right, to snap a probably completely out-of-focus and missing-the-object-of-focus picture with my trusty waterproof Pentax. While pushing the releaser button, I noticed some parts of the old tree I was holding on to slowly giving away. A flash, a thump, and I found myself suddenly clinging to another part of the tree, while the green power diode of my camera now flickered at me from the bottom of the stream. Great, I thought, you’ve ruined your camera for a picture that won’t even have anything on it and wasn’t that great to begin with either. This is why I want to make it worth it now, a posteriori: worth a blog post. Examining the SD card later on it turned out, that there was indeed a motif on that picture, and even the one I had hoped to catch: Two male Anolis etheridgei sleeping together on a leaf (more like waking up on a leaf due to my intrusion), facing away from each other. What made this observation picture-worthy for me is that these weren’t the only specimens I found like that that night. At least five other pairs of male A. etheridgei were sleeping in the same position, touching each other’s tails. When I approached them, the one that would wake up first would make a jerking movement, then both would simultaneously drop from their sleeping site into the leaf litter. They were way harder to catch than many other sleeping anoles I’ve stalked at night. Four eyes are better than two, as the saying goes, and those little anoles seemed to have realized just that.

Cuddling for safety

Rest in peace, my trusty Pentax Optio WP.

Nat Geo just posted an article on the rediscovery of six species of Haitian frogs thought to be extinct.  This seemed like a good excuse to re-tell the story of the recent rediscovery of Anolis eugenegrahami from Haiti.  This remarkable “semi-aquatic” anole, known from only a single, highly degraded locality, had not been seen in quite some time until an intrepid team of herpetologists set out to look for them.  Read what they found here.  Now, if only someone could find A. darlingtoni….

In the Dominican countryside, it is widely rumored that you can get worms from the bite of the salta cocote (a.k.a. a crown giant anole belonging to the ricordii group).  It’s easy to see how this rumor might have gotten started when you look in the mouth of a salta cocote!  The A. ricordii in the photo above had a large cluster of maggots in its mouth, as did other individuals from the same locality.  These maggots have some narly teeth that they seemingly use to dig into the flesh on the back of the lizards throat.  We’re taking measures to identify these larvae now, but perhaps somebody can save us the trouble of doing this work ourselves – have these buggers been described?