Anolis Back In Strong Force At SICB 2013

Annual conferences are a major way for scientists to get their research out to a broad audience and to find out what is new and emerging in different fields. For those of us who study Anolis lizards, there are two annual conferences that are a major draw for our community – the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) meeting in January and the SSE/SSB Evolution meeting in June. There are other conferences, as well, that meet less often, such as the World Congress of Herpetology and the Anolis Symposium, which are also important gatherings for our growing community.

Last year, we were pleased to report that Anolis research was prominently featured throughout the SICB conference in Charleston, South Carolina. In addition to more than a dozen talks and posters, there was also an open forum on the Anolis genome and evo-devo research, in light of the publication of the A. carolinensis genome. The online schedule for SICB 2013 has just been published and a preliminary search using the keyword Anolis returns a list of 18 talks and posters. There is a great diversity of topics explored this year, including phylogenetic frameworks for evolutionary convergence, aggressive behavior, locomotion, thermal ecology, and parasitism, among others.

One of the cool things we did last year was blog live from SICB in Charleston (1, 2, 3). Because the conference was hosted in South Carolina, Marc Tollis shared some pictures of actual anoles at the conference center. We plan to blog live from the conference in San Francisco and provide you with information about all the interesting research being done on anoles. Stay tuned for more!

Anole Annals Photo Contest 2012: Judge’s Choice Winner

Anolis bartschi photograph by Steven De Decker.

[Editor’s Note: the person who took this photograph is Steven De Decker; see comments after the first paragraph for corrected information]

As one of the seven or eight folks who judged the photos in this year’s AA photo contest I want to give some recognition to an image that didn’t even make the list of finalists determined by popular vote.  My judge’s choice award winner is a striking photograph of a juvenile of the Cuban endemic Anolis bartschi that was taken by Joe Burgess at Cueva del Indio, Vinales, Cuba. Although observed most frequently on rocks in karstic regions, individuals like this one are also commonly seen on trunks and other broad perches emerging from the karst beneath. The quality and clarity of this image are superb. The subtle colors along the animals spine and the steely blue of the eye and surrounding region are beautiful under natural light (perhaps complemented with a tactfully subtle fill flash?). A catch-light in the black eye gives the lizard some personality, and makes me wonder what it might be thinking. The right front forelimb is lifted off the trunk and possibility somewhat blurred by motion, impressing me with the animals agility and suggesting that its ready to make a move. This photo that makes me want to get out and find some anoles.

[Note from Jonathan Losos: I screwed up! There were two photos of A. bartschi entered into the photo contest, and when Rich asked for information on the A. bartschi photo, I gave him the info for the wrong one. The photo above was taken by Steven De Decker (who also took the grand prize winning photograph of A. allisoni). Steven had this to say about the photograph of the juvenile: “It was in the proximity of the prehistoric wall at Vinales, Pinar Del Rio. We were there with 2 local biologists who told us A. bartschi was pretty common to be found at the wall 10 years ago. Great was our disappointment when we saw that [the curly tailed lizard] Leiocephalus carinatus had taken over habitat near the wall. When we went back we decided to investigate some semi caves at the border of the park, and that’s where we found A. bartschi sitting on a trunk near the caves. And to answer your question, no I didn’t use a flash for this particular photo. Using the flash here would have given me a black background.
Meanwhile, below I’ve pasted the photo of A. bartschi by Joe Burgess (whose photo of an A. gorgonae took second place in the contest); this is the photo for which Rich gave info in his post above.

New Method For Visualizing Trait Evolution On A Tree

Phylogenetic comparative methods whiz Liam Revell has developed a new method to visualize character evolution of continuous traits on a phylogeny. The program is cool and worth checking out on his Phytools blog, but the important point is that he illustrates the method by reconstructing size evolution in Greater Antillean anoles.

Name That Anole

Good luck!

Knight Anole Fine Art

Get it today–framed prints, greetings cards, what a great holiday gift!

Photo Guide To Mexican Anoles

Could this be the all-time coolest anole dewlap?

As we all know, even though the diversity of anoles is greater on mainland Central and South America, we know a lot more about the island species. This extends even to simple matters such as resources for learning about and identifying species–for many mainland areas, it is hard to get information on the species that occur there, although this has changed in recent years.

Nowhere is this more true than in Mexico, an anologically rich area for which information on the anolifauna has not been brought together into a single compendium. Into this breach step Levi Gray, Steve Poe, and Adrian Nieto Montes de Oca, who have just produced a photo guide to the anoles of Mexico.

They recognize 46 species of Mexican anoles.  Of these 46, the authors and collaborators in the Poe Lab have caught 40 of them, including approximately 21 from their type localities, and field work this month is targetting three of the others.  The photos in the key are all from the authors, except the carolinensis photo provided by Alexis Harrison.  The key includes all Mexican anoles that the authors recognize (leaving out forms they consider unlikely to be valid–e.g., cumingi–or that have questionable status–e.g., utowanae).  The authors report that the well-known species schmidti, simmonsi, breedlovei, polyrhachis, microlepis and adleri are junior synonyms of other forms; these points will be discussed in a paper currently in review in Zootaxa; unfamiliar names in the key (e.g., rubiginosus) will be explained in that paper as well.

Below are low-resolution pictures of the guides; larger, downloadable pdfs can be accessed here. And I can’t help but adding: isn’t the diversity of dewlap colors and patterns incredible? I vote for sericeus as one of the greatest ever!

Spend A Night At The Museum With Anolis Lizards

Darwin Day Herp Tour, Museum of Comparative Zoology, 2011

Attention Boston-area Anolophiles – This Friday, November 9th, the Harvard University Biological Sciences Society (HUBSS) is hosting its annual Night at the Museum event! This free and recurring event at the Harvard Museum of Natural History features plenty of tasty treats, exciting exhibits, and exclusive behind-the-scenes tours of the research collections in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Although the event is sponsored and hosted by the undergraduate society, interested members of the public are welcome to participate.

As part of this event, I will be giving two free tours of the Herpetology collections. I love working for these events because I get to display my favorite pieces from our amazing collections, including enormous croc skulls, strange and rare reptiles, and, naturally, a dizzying array of anoles. Anoles will be featured prominently in my tours as I use them to illustrate the principles of convergent evolution and to talk about island biogeography. Visitors will get to participate in a team activity using Anolis specimens. If you’re in the area, how else would you rather spend a Friday night than learning about anoles?

Check out the HUBSS website for this event and I hope to see you there!

Electoral Map Awash In Blue In Anole Photo Contest

Well, the election is finally over, and the electoral results are awash with the color blue. More than 300 votes were cast in the semi-finals round, and then an all-star panel chose our winners from the top 12 in the popular vote. Perhaps surprisingly (perhaps not), the hoi polloi and the experts identified the same top three photos.

So now, with no further ado, the winner of the 2012 Anole Photo Contest is…

Oliver The Over-Achieving Anole: The Book

Another entry into the ever-expanding genre of anole literature. Check out snippets of the book. Amazon.com describes the book thusly: “From the moment of his hatching, in a flowerpot high above the ground, Oliver Anole saw the world as a game and an adventure. His spirit of play and love of creating spreads through the anole world, as just by being himself, he is able to inspire others to be inventive and create the lives they enjoy. I wrote Oliver the Overachiever to encourage children to celebrate their individuality and sense of community. I wanted to illustrate, through story and pictures, that a small person can create great effects that can change his world for the better.” And as for the author, “Karin Mesa has worked for the past nineteen years as a designer of decorative glass. She lives on the west coast of Florida with her husband, glass artist, Julian Mesa. Their studio, located in a one acre garden, provides the inspiration of nature that Karin has always used for her illustrations. Throughout her life observing nature has been fuel for Karin s imagination. Jagged tree stumps in a snowy winter became elven castles. Tree frogs nestled among orchid roots whisper of their cozy hidden homes throughout a garden world. Small lives, out of sight to many, are brought to life in water color and pencil. Karin s stories about these small creatures can be applied to their own lives by children, in ways that are real to them as individuals. Karin has stated her purpose in writing and illustrating like this: I hope that in a light and playful way my stories and pictures will encourage children to develop their creativity and sense of adventure. I want them to know the power they have to change things for the better.”

Anole Research Featured In Animal Cognition Documentary

Manuel Leal’s fascinating studies showing that anoles have more going on than anyone would have expected is featured in a new Canadian TV documentary. The Nature of Things is a well known series hosted by the inimitable David Suzuki. This episode on the cognitive abilities is wide-ranging and has all the usual suspects (chimps, crows, etc.)…and anoles! Not to mention Manuel Leal. Unfortunately, the series can only be accessed online if you’re in Canada, but the rest of us can see a snippet on the post on Chipojolab, as well as a “behind-the-scenes” discussion of the film crew’s visit to Leal’s lab.

Filming in the Leal lab. From chipojolab post.

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