Fights among anoles are fairly common in nature, and we’ve had several previous posts documenting anole fights captured on film (1, 2, 3, 4). A casual browsing of YouTube reveals many more anole fights, mostly between male Anolis carolinensis (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Many of these videos use the Rocky theme music to set the tone. I was really enjoying watching these videos until I got to thinking that some of them might actually be staged. I browsed the comments to see if I could figure out if the fights were staged, but didn’t come up with any definitive proof (in a few cases, I added my own comment asking directly if the fights were staged). However, there are certainly people who have commented that watching these videos has inspired them to raise fighting anoles. What do you think? Do some of these fights look staged to you?
Male Anolis marmoratus marmoratus from the town Capesterre in Guadeloupe.
Ali versus Frazier. Athens versus Sparta. Harry Potter versus Voldemort. History has had it share of epic battles, many of which we have documented on the Anole Annals, such as here and here. In my humble opinion, however, none of those minor scuffles can measure up to a thrilling encounter I photographed between two males of Anolis marmoratus on the island of Basse-Terre in Guadeloupe.
Martha Muñoz’s photo of developing Anolis longitibialis embryos were selected as a “Short Sharp Science” feature. Congratulations, Martha!
Several posts on this blog (here and here and here) have reported interactions between birds and our favourite lizards, most of which have involved predation (but see here). Here’s a slightly different twist on the theme.
Boal (2008), in a paper in the Journal of Caribbean Ornithology, described the response of a female Antillean Crested Hummingbird on Guana Island in the British Virgin Islands to an Anolis stratulus that got too close to her nest. Anyone who has watched hummingbirds interact with each other for even a little while (particularly around hummingbird-feeders) will know how vicious they can be, and it isn’t surprising that a nesting female wouldn’t hesitate in attacking a lizard likely bigger than herself.
Spot the Antillean Crested Hummingbird
Thom’s recent post on the upcoming SICB meeting reminded me that I was yet to share the anole research I learned about at the Animal Behavior Meeting this past summer in Bloomington, Indiana. There were just a handful of presentations on herp research during the meeting, and I was excited to see that there were others presenting work on anoles:
Sarah Flanagan presented work from her Honors thesis with Catherine Bevier whereby she used mate choice experiments to test whether female Anolis sagrei prefer males with greater physiological capacities and/or higher quality territories. Sarah’s study showed that females preferred males with depleted liver glycogen (glycogen levels were measured in leg muscle and liver samples after mate choice trials). Females, however, did not show a preference for males in a territory filled with plants over males in bare territories.
Check out this piece in the New Scientist, which picked up on our images of Anolis embryos and Thom’s awesome research!
Embryo of Anolis longitibialis, a trunk-ground anole from the Dominican Republic.
The readers of this blog do not need to be convinced that anoles are an amazing model system in evolutionary biology. New and exciting research often finds its way to the Anole Annals. Here we’ve learned about emerging trends in Anolis genomics, speciation, and comparative phylogenetics, to list just a few. In recent years, Anolis has also become a model system for developmental biology. For example, a recent study by Dr. Thom Sanger demonstrated that the diversity of limb dimensions among ecomorphs have evolved from similar developmental mechanisms.
This summer I worked a bit with Thom to learn how to stage Anolis embryos using his handy staging series as a guide. The goal of the project was to determine the stage at which female anoles laid eggs under two treatment conditions – a hot treatment (32°C) and a cold treatment (20°C). I had females from three populations of A. cybotes (55, 700, and 1400 meters in elevation), one population of A. shrevei (2450 m), and one population of A. longitibialis (100m). Unfortunately, I was unable to collect very many eggs despite letting the experiment run for six weeks. I did, however, manage to get several beautiful embryos, which I have imaged and staged. Here I’ll provide some pictures and give a few shorthand methods for staging Anolis embryos.
Reproductive cycle of Anolis trinitatis, from Licht and Gorman (1970).
All anoles lay only a single egg at a time, but that doesn’t mean that no variation exists among species in reproductive cycles. Still the most comprehensive study of this topic is Licht and Gorman’s (1970) comparison of nine populations of seven species throughout the Caribbean (downloadable as part of AA’s “Classics in Anole Literature” Initiative—pdf contributions welcome!). They found that reproductive activity was most constant through the year in the two southernmost species examined, A. trinitatis and A. griseus from St. Vincent. In the remaining species, both sexes showed some degree of seasonal fluctuations, although reproductive activity by at least some individuals occurred in almost all months. The authors considered rainfall to be the primary factor driving variation in reproductive activity, although in a later paper, they reconsidered and suggested that seasonal temperature cycles were probably more important.
Despite the ease with which such data could be collected, relatively few studies in the past four decades have followed up on this work. One such study on a Colombian anole was featured in AA recently, but for the most part, little work of this sort has been conducted in recent years. Who knows what surprises await an anole comparative reproductive biologist?
Recently AA asked George Gorman for some thoughts on this work, and he provided the summary below of the several papers he and Paul Licht wrote in the first half of the 1970’s on anole reproductive cycles:
Licht and Gorman. 1970. University of California Publications in Zoology 95:1-52.
Geographic range of natural and introduced populations of Anolis sagrei. From Angetter et al. (2011).
The Cuban brown anole, Anolis sagrei, is indisputably the most successful of all Caribbean anoles. Not only is it found throughout almost all of Cuba at low elevations, but also everywhere in the Bahamas, on many islands in western Cuba, and even on the coast of Central America. Not surprisingly given its natural colonizing ability, the brown anole is the anole most widely introduced by humans as well, now established not only in Florida, but also on many islands in the Caribbean, as well as Taiwan, Hawaii and, most recently, Costa Rica.
What is surprising is how widely the brown anole has spread in North America. As the map above indicates, invasive populations have moved to areas much farther north than the species’ most northerly outpost in the Bahamas. One would think that Cuban anoles—or even Bahamian ones—would not be adapted to conditions in Georgia because environmental conditions are so different from those in Cuba.
To examine this idea, Angetter et al. conducted a species distribution modeling exercise to compare the environmental conditions that characterize the brown anole’s native range with that of its introduced range.
Initially skeptical of my ambitions, a group of security guards celebrate the capture of a massive Anolis baleatus.
Part of any field-based research program are the random, unimagined discoveries that develop into fascinating side projects. (I’m sure that statement made my advisor’s blood pressure swell a tad). One such “discovery” I’ve been a part of during my adventures in the Dominican Republic are the existence of maggot infestations inside the mouths of crown giant anoles. Another crucial component to field research are the memories you take home with you – I mean the ones you’re not even sure you believe yourself when you tell your friends and family because they are just too random, bizarre and wonderful to be possible. And that January night when Miguel Landestoy, Anthony Geneva, and I first glimpsed these writhing maggots in the mouths of giant anoles certainly qualifies… (Cliff notes: Cipro and solenodon).
The Anolis carolinensis genome represents the first annotated squamate genome and provides a valuable resource for those interested in anole morphology, development, physiology, systematics, and behavior (yes, even behavior!). Since the release of the original A. carolinensis draft genome in March 2007, no fewer than 20 papers have mined it for a deeper understanding of the amniote genome and its evolution. Many more labs are currently developing tools and resources for functional genomics and we can expect a number of exciting advancements in coming years. But with increased genomic information comes the need for community-wide organization and discussion about how to handle, store, label, and communicate these data. These well-known hurdles have each been faced in other communities. In addition, the community of Anolis researchers can also expect new challenges due to the number of comparative studies being conducted among populations and species (compared to research being done within relatively homogeneous strains or lines). To handle at least a few of these challenges, the Anolis Gene Nomenclature Committee was formed, comprised of researchers from diverse biological disciplines and representatives from public genomic databases. Culminating nearly two years of discussion, the first publication from this group is now available online (for free!) from BMC Genomics, outlining basic guidelines for the terminology and symbols used in future work on anole genomics. This paper represents an evolving document and is presented here to elicit further discussion.