Anole Annals

Missing anoles? Or missing anole biogeographers?

As you may (or may not) know, the 6th meeting of the International Biogeography Society (IBS) is underway in Miami, FL.

So here I am, in the anole invasion capital of the world, with the Caribbean on the doorstep, and a look through the conference program reveals a paltry TWO talks on our favourite lizards. Contrast this with Martha Munoz’s reports from SICB, with 18 (or so) anole talks. Of course, there’s something to be said for quality over quantity and the two anole presentations here do a good job of flying the flag. Yesterday Jonathan Losos kicked off one of the symposia with a talk on anole traits, function and biogeography (with a smashing blue / yellow colour scheme), and later today I’ll be searching out a poster on anole fossil assemblages (post forthcoming)

Nonetheless, I still can’t help wonder, where are the anole biogeographers? You can’t look through a text on island biogeography, species area curves or adaptive radiation without finding a dewlap. So the question is, are people not doing anole biogeography anymore? This isn’t the case, so it can only be that either the IBS isn’t on the radar, or people choose not to go. Either way, you’re missing out on a great meeting – it’s an excellent opportunity for the anole research community to radiate and reach a slightly different audience.

Regular readers of Anole Annals will know that, like humans, anoles are parasitized by malaria. It’s a different lineage of malaria specialized for lizards but it is malaria none-the-less.

What readers of Anole Annals might not know, however, is that anoles don’t seem to suffer from the cold, the flu, or whooping cough (not according to a quick literature search, anyways).

These illnesses do afflict humans, however, and this winter season is shaping up to be a serious one. Perhaps you have already experienced this.

Top things to do to avoid getting and/or passing on the flu this season:
1) Wash your hands frequently.
2) Avoid touching your mouth, nose, and eyes.
3) Stay home if you’re sick. Keep your kids home if they’re sick. And encourage your colleagues to stay home if they’re sick.
4) Get your flu shot and your pertussis booster.
5) Encourage your friends to get their shots too. Herd immunity!
6) Develop lizardy super powers that render you invincible.

PS: The flu-shot cannot give you the flu by accident. This is a pernicious myth. The virus particles injected in the flu shot are dead, zapped, kaput. You may feel a little under the weather as your body works to develop antibodies but that’s a whole lot better than getting the actual flu. I felt fine after my flu shot.

Sometimes anoles are lovers, too. But even when they love, they seem to fight. Photo of Anolis carolinensis taken from Wikipedia.

Greetings again from San Francisco! The anticipation for  yesterday’s Animal Communication session was palpable. Usually a big Anolis hit at SICB, the Communication session did not fail to impress. The session was divided into two sections – Lovers and Fighters. Can you guess which one had all the anole talks? Three out of the five talks in the Fighters session were about anoles. Incidentally, most of the talks in the Lovers session were about tree frogs. This was perfectly to my liking – I’ll take the blood, guts, and gore any day. The three Anolis talks presented fascinating new work.

The first was by Jessica Edwards, a graduate student working with Simon Lailvaux at the University of New Orleans on aggressive encounters between Anolis carolinensis and A. sagrei, which has successfully invaded much of A. carolinensis‘ range. In a previous study, Jessica and Simon found that A. carolinensis tends to perch higher in the presence of A. sagrei than when found alone.  For her experiment, Jessica placed one male of each species into a large cage with a single perch. At the top of this perch she placed a heat lamp, so that there was one optimal site (warm top) and one sub-optimal site (cool bottom) on the perch. She then scored behaviors and recorded the victor in each trial.  She found that relative dewlap size was a good predictor of trial outcome, and that the each species was about equally successful at obtaining the optimal perch, although A. sagrei did have a slight advantage. She repeated this experiment using females of each species, and found something exciting and perhaps unexpected – Anolis sagrei was the clear victor in all but one of several dozen trials! Jessica posits that, in the wild, female A. sagrei push female A. carolinensis higher up in the trees. In polygynous systems such as anoles, where one male defends a group of two or more females, then we would expect the males to go where the females do, and so would expect males to increase their perch heights, as well.

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Greetings again from San Francisco! Day One of SICB has been full of amazing talks and posters. The poster session yielded interesting new research by Diego Castro and Michele Johnson, of Trinity University, on the relationship between testosterone and dewlapping behavior. Diego, an undergraduate studying neurobiology, asked whether muscles involved in sexual or aggressive behavior would have increased testosterone. To answer this question, Diego focused on five species of Dominican anoles, including Anolis brevirostris,  A. coelestinus, A. cybotes, and A. olssoni. Diego observed the natural behavior of these species, and quantified the average number of pushups and dewlaps they performed. They found that A. coelestinus and A. cybotes have fewer dewlap extensions and several pushups in their displays, while A. brevirostris dewlaps as often as it performs pushups. They then quantified the concentration of androgen receptors in the ceratohyoid, which controls dewlap extension to determine whether levels of androgen receptor protein correlate with sexual display behavior. They found that species with greater display rates also had a higher number of cells expressing androgen receptor protein. Their next goal is to measure androgen receptor protein in the bicep and tricep. Great job, Diego!