Anole Annals

Breakdown of anoles in the Schwartz collection housed at KU, highlighting proportional representation of the five most frequently sampled species.

Albert Schwartz was a prolific describer of new anole species and author of peerless contributions to our understanding of geographic variation within and among widespread anole species (see 1 and 2). In addition to his published contributions, Schwartz and his colleagues accumulated a massive collection of preserved specimens that continues to serve as a foundation for research on anoles. Although these specimens are now housed at a number of institutions, the bulk of his anole material – 15,511 specimens to be precise – can now be found at the University of Kansas. This collection includes representatives of 93 anole species, but the sampling among species is highly uneven and the five most frequently sampled species account for more than 35% of the total collection. Sampling of these top five species ranges from 552 to 1838 individuals. My trivia question to you, my fellow anole enthusiasts, is “What are the top five species in Schwartz’s KU collection?” As a hint, I’ll remind you that Schwartz’s efforts were focused primarily on the northern Caribbean and that he spent the last few decades of his career working extensively on Hispaniola.

Name That (Enormous) Dewlap

By Rich Glor

On February 22, 2012

In Anole Annals Trivia

The species pictured above has one of the largest dewlaps of any anole, with a ceratobranchial that extends posteriorly well beyond the forelimbs. What species is it?

Anoles and the IUCN

By Luke Mahler

On February 21, 2012

In New Research

Anoles are well-known for a lot of reasons, but conservation is not one of them. Possibly because of the abundance, hardiness, and visibility of the more common anole species, the group as a whole is often regarded as one that’s doing just fine. To date, very few specific efforts have been made to assess the conservation status of anole species.*

Anole species vary, of course, in how they’re doing. Although species such as Anolis cristatellus, cybotes, and limifrons seem to occur on every perch across broad distributions, species like A. fowleri and A. megalopithecus have only been located a handful of times in the wild despite some considerable efforts. Dozens more species are known from just a single locality, where they may or may not be locally abundant. While a lot of rare or little-known anoles may simply be secretive or geographically restricted, some are very clearly endangered.

Cabela’s Panfish Poles For Lizard Catching: Hope Springs Eternal

By Jonathan Losos

On February 20, 2012

In Research Methods

The Anole Annals community was rocked recently by news that Cabela’s 10-foot, collapsible panfish poles–ideal for anole catching–are no longer available. Panic and pandemonium have ensued, but fear not: all may not be lost. In response to a comment I lodged on their website, I received this response: “We do still carry item number 115800. You are welcome to go to our web site cabelas.com and search the item number to see if that is what you are looking for. If not please call our customer service number of 1-800-237-8888 and ask to speak to a products associate who may be able to locate the one we used to carry and help with the manufacturer’s name and number” (I had asked for info to contact the manufacter directly). Melissa Woolley did so and was told that they are listed as backordered and should be available in late April. So, maybe there is still hope. I would like to urge all concerned anolians to go to Cabela’s Customer Service webpage and say something to encourage Cabela’s to restock the panfish pole pronto! https://cabelas.custhelp.com/app/ask

Knight anoles in the Bahamas

By Jonathan Losos

On February 19, 2012

In Introduced Anoles

Knight anole from Grand Bahama. Photo courtesy of Daniel Murray.

A population of Anolis equestris has been reported from the island of Grand Bahamas. Specifically near Our Lucaya, living in a stand of dilly trees.

Only A. sagrei is native to Grand Bahama (which is somewhat remarkable given the size of the island), but equestris is the third introduced anole there, following distichus and a green anole (either carolinensis or smaragdinus, but I’m not sure if it is clear which). Is anyone aware of knight anoles elsewhere in the Bahamas? They seem to be getting around the Caribbean, as they have shown up in New Providence in the Bahamas, as well as Grand Cayman and the Turks and Caicos (see Knapp et al. and Powell et al. chapters in book discussed here). Given their size, they seem an unlikely stow-away, although eggs could be transported in nursery plants. The pet trade has also been implicated as a possibility.

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.

Another view of anole sex

Both maynardi & sagrei drink from our bird bath regularly & follow me when I water the garden to drink off wet decks or leaves.

Anolis Headlines A Major New Art Exhibit

By Jonathan Losos

On February 16, 2012

In Anole Art, Literature, and Humor

Calling all German-speaking Anole Annals aficionados. Just what the heck does this say? Some Dutch speakers loosely translated this as an announcement of a new art exhibit on sex. Richtig? A German-to-English translation website helpfully translates this as: “Light signals, the correct reputation or Pushups? From a research group from the mountain wildlife shows the state museum of natural history in Stuttgart until May 2012 in the exhibition “sex.” It is also about phenomena such as infidelity or patchwork-families.”

Thanks to Susanne Renner for her eagle eye out for lizards in adverts.

Piecing Together The Anole Family Tree: Anole Fossils

By Emma Sherratt

On February 15, 2012

In Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree

Our knowledge of the evolution of anoles comes primarily from studying living forms and using information about how species are related (phylogenetic trees) to predict how traits such as their head shape have changed over time. Scientists often use this approach because there may be few (or no) actual fossils representing those stages in the evolutionary past. For anoles, this is no exception; the fossil history of our favourite lizards is sparsely recorded. Here I shall give you, Anole Annals readers, a brief overview of what we do know about anole ancestors and what we can learn from studying these fossils.

Fossil hunting history

In the box below I summarise the five papers that have published upon fossils of the genus Anolis.

Anole Love

By Jonathan Losos

On February 14, 2012

In Anole Art, Literature, and Humor

The management here at Anole Annals feels responsible for putting up an appropriate, anole-themed Valentine Day’s post. Unfortunately, our normally reliable stable of incredibly talented and imaginative authors has not come up with the expected image of an anoline cupid, an anole starstruck with love, or some such, so we’re in a bit of a bind. It’s not too late, creative types–there’s still 5 valentine hours left here in North America!

However, in their absence, we thought a little googling would solve the problem. Typing in “anole love” found only one appropriate, G-rated image, and it came from…Anole Annals (below)! So we settled for the intriguing book cover above, which of course leads to the question: has anyone read this provocative romance novel?

read all about it here: https://www.anoleannals.org/2012/01/03/asymmetrical-dewlap-color-in-anolis-lineatus-on-curacao/

Science Is More Interesting When You Discover You Were Wrong: The Backstory on the Anole Founder Effect Experiment

By Jonathan Losos

On February 13, 2012

In New Research

They thought it was only a three hour tour.

In my career, I have found that the most exciting research is when the results are exactly the opposite of what I had expected. Certainly, it’s nice to show that what you thought was correct, but you really learn something when the opposite occurs–it makes you look at questions in a new way and often leads to new insights. This has happened to me several times, most recently in our experimental study of founder effects in Bahamian anoles (paper downloadable here).

One of the tiny islands on which the founder effect experiment was conducted. Note the scraggly vegetation. Photo by Jason Kolbe.

Here’s the story: we have been conducting studies on anoles in the Bahamas for quite some time, using tiny islands as experimental test tubes. We had seen island populations wiped out by hurricanes, and we had documented anoles colonizing these islands, so we knew that populations often must be founded by overwater dispersal, probably by one or very few individuals. Given the long-running controversy over the evolutionary significance of founder effects, we had long discussed whether we could create an experimental founder effect, in replicate, to see what would happen. But we never started such an experiment, for a simple reason: suitable islands for our various ecological and evolutionary experiments were in short supply, and this experiment wasn’t a high priority.

Enter Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne in short succession in the late summer of 2004.