Anole Annals

Polymorphism in dorsal patterns of female Anolis humilis. Color version of photo in Parmelaere et al., Biol. J. Linn. Soc. (2001), courtesy E. Parmelaere.

The topic of female dorsal pattern polymorphism has been broached several times in Anole Annals posts. Such polymorphism occurs in some species and not others; a comprehensive survey by Paemelaere et al. demonstrated that it was much more common in mainland anoles than in island species, and in some clades more than in others.

But the bigger question is: does dorsal pattern matter to the ladies?

The Dating World of Anoles (WARNING: Contains Mature Content!)

By Audrey Kelly

On December 11, 2011

In Natural History Observations

In the summer of 2010, one of the Glor Lab field teams gathered video of Anolis distichus displays as part of a project to quantify display diversity across the Dominican Republic. A video of a fight from this expedition was posted on Anole Annals and some great color changes from the same trip were posted on the Glor Lab’s blog a few months back. Another exciting action that was caught on video a few times throughout the trip was a little bit of the hanky panky. Generally, the male performed a set of pushups after which he chased and contacted the female. The two then performed some pushups together, followed by a few minutes of copulation in a leg-wrap. Copulation was followed by more pushups from the male. The video above shows an example of this typical sequence of events. Viewer discretion is advised.

Anole Photo Contest–Grand Prize Winner Gets a Prize!

By Jonathan Losos

On December 10, 2011

In All Posts

To celebrate Anole Annals‘ move to a new platform (https://www.anoleannals.org/), yesterday we announced a photography competition–winning photographs will be put into the rotation of header images displayed at the banner at the top of the page. And now we add a sweetener to the pot. The Grand Prize winner will receive a copy of Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree: Ecology and Adaptive Radiation personally signed, with great embellishment and profuse gratitude, by the author himself. Surely a valued keepsake for years to come!

In order to be considered, an image must be precisely 1000 pixels wide by 288 pixels high. We’ll credit you as photographer wherever possible, but ask that images not include any text or watermarks. You can submit your images using our blog’s new ability to easily add images to a comment; just click the “Choose File” link beneath the comment box and navigate to your JPEG photo. One way to do this is to use Photoshop to resize individual images. From the Image Menu: go to “Image Size” then change the width to 1000 px.

Get your photos in now. Deadline some time soon, once we have enough good entries. Good luck! May the best photographer win!

Yellow Anole Eggs

By Rich Glor

On December 10, 2011

In Notes from the Field, Research Methods

A 'slug' next to a healthy, freshly laid egg. The scale bars in millimeters.

Anyone who’s raised anoles has likely run across the occasional slug. I’m not talking about shell-less gastropod mollusks, but rather about the flaccid yellow eggs that anoles lay from time to time. Slugs are uncalcified and generally considered infertile. Because slugs never develop viable embryos and tend to quickly rot when incubated most lizard keepers simply discard them. Is there anything to be learned from slugs? In our colony, we tend to recover the most slugs early and late in the breeding season, but we’re not sure why this is the case. Is it possible that the male and female are a bit out of sync, or that the female is priming her reproductive tract for the real deal? We’re also recovering more slugs in our hybrid crosses than in pure crosses, but we’ll have more on that later. Are any reproductive physiologists out there more familiar with the mechanisms responsible for production of slugs?

More Anoles from Day’s Edge Productions

By Yoel Stuart

On December 10, 2011

In All Posts

Screen shot of Anolis sagrei male and female from The Runner

Anole Annals regulars Nathan Dappen and Neil Losin, of Day’s Edge Productions, have won another prize for their filmmaking. This time, it’s for their entry, The Runner, in the World Wildlife Fund video competition themed “Life. Nature. You. Make the Connection.”

Screen shot of Anolis carolinensis male from The Runner

Footage of Anolis sagrei and A. carolinensis in Miami plays during seconds 40-45.

How Far Has the Brown Anole Invaded?

By Jonathan Losos

On December 9, 2011

In Notes from the Field

In a recent post, Alison Devan reported the presence of the brown anole, A. sagrei, in Savannah, GA. That prompted AA to inquire on the HerpGuide Facebook page where else the brown anole has been seen in the southeastern U.S., other than Florida and Louisiana. You can see for yourself the responses above, to which I can add a lawyer’s office in Boston and a plane out of Denver. Anyone else seen sagrei getting about? Any predictions how far it’ll spread (see this recent post for a distribution map of sagrei in the southeast today)?

By the way, the HerpGuide FB page is a place for people to post herp photos to be identified, as well as other herp related items. Worth joining.

New Host, New Look

By Rich Glor

On December 9, 2011

In All Posts

If you’re here, you’ve caught on to the fact that we’ve moved to our new home at anoleannals.org. We’re having a header photo contest to celebrate this move, but before introducing the contest I need to cover some important information about the move.

First, I want to say thanks to Melissa Woolley for making the move possible. Melissa moved the entirety of past Annals – including posts, comments, categories, and tags – to a new server, so you can just keep on using the new blog the same way you did the old one. Note that comments and posts on the new anoleannals.org site will not appear at the old anoleannals.wordpress.com, and vice versa. To avoid confusion, the old blog will soon disappear entirely from view. Melissa painstakingly created new accounts for all of our old users on the new system, but you might need to reset your password, which you can do here. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this might cause and welcome any feedback about how we could further smooth the transition. Temporary glitches aside, this move permits us to make some much needed improvements and expansions to the blog (we’ll introduce one such improvement very shortly!). Those of you who routinely get to us by Googling “Anole Annals,” should use this opportunity to bookmark our new page!

OK, on to the photo contest! We’re looking for new header images and need your help. We’ll likely do a reader poll to pick a few winners among the entries received, but the precise format of the contest will depend upon the number of entries we get. Winning photos will earn a place of honor among our set of rotating header images. In order to be considered, an image must be precisely 1000 pixels wide by 288 pixels high. We’ll credit you as photographer wherever possible, but ask that images not include any text or watermarks. You can submit your images using our blog’s new ability to easily add images to a comment; just click the “Choose File” link beneath the comment box and navigate to your JPEG photo. I can’t wait to see all of your amazing anole images!

Anoles on Genbank

By Anthony J Geneva

On December 9, 2011

In Anole Genome Research, New Research

With the recent sequencing of the Anolis carolinensis genome and Thom’s recent post on resources for other anole species I got to wondering how many DNA sequences are available for anoles? In an effort to answer this question, I searched for DNA sequence data from Anolis and other genera now considered part of Anolis (Norops, Chamaeleolis, Chamaelinorops, and Phenacosaurus) on the NCBI’s popular GenBank database. I found that Genbank‘s nucleotide database contains over 29,ooo unique anole sequences. Not surprisingly, the most sequence (25,973) are from A. carolinensis. Remaining sequences are divided among 216 anole species. The top species after carolinensis are: krugi (433), distichus (378), sagrei (351) and cristatellus (328). Is anyone else surprised by these totals? I would have guessed sagrei would be second. I think A. distichus will at least double in the next few years, partly because I’m doing lots of sequencing from this species myself.

Only 29 species are represented by more than 10 sequences and half of the 216 species represented in GenBank are represented by a single (usually mitochondrial) sequence. The availability of this data highlights our prospects for asking evolutionary and ecological questions across the rest of anoline diversity, but also highlights the huge amount of work ahead if we are interested in making broad genus-wide comparisons. Admittedly, Genebank lags behind current research as most of us only post sequences at the time of publication (we have hundreds of sequences to be added in the next few years).

Can You Spot the Sleeping Anole?

By Daniel Scantlebury

On December 8, 2011

In Anole Annals Trivia, Natural History Observations, Notes from the Field

Somewhere in this photo is a sleeping anole. The species is one that has only been reported from the Dominican Republic a few times.

If you can find the sleeping anole in those photo, you will have contributed to cataloging the anole fauna of the Dominican Republic. Points if you can identify the species. Hint – the photo was taken on the northern slopes of the Sierra de Bahorucco approx. 12km east of the Haitian border.

The Kings of Greater Antillean Anole Taxonomy II: Thomas Barbour

By Rich Glor

On December 8, 2011

In Classics from the Literature

I previously introduced my mission to recognize the five anole systematists responsible for describing the majority of the anole species found in the Greater Antilles. The first king of Greater Antillean anole taxonomy was the prolific E. D. Cope. Cope was the last in a line of authors who described anole species that he’d never actually spent time with in the field (see also Duméril and Bibron). The next king on my list, by contrast, was an avid field biologist and conducted field work in the West Indies throughout his career.