Tag: Anolis cristatellus Page 2 of 3

Evolution 2015 Recap

On July 9, 2015

Evolution 2015 is officially over and we have all sadly left beautiful Guarujá, Brazil. There were a lot of great talks and posters and a great representation of South American students and researchers. For coverage on the conference as a whole, check out #evol2015 on twitter! The herps were few and far between (I only saw 2 in my 16 days in Brazil!) but the posters and talks on herps were numerous. Unfortunately, anoles were poorly represented at Evolution this year with only three anole talks and a couple of others that briefly highlighted anoles. If you weren’t able to make it to Brazil, I’ve got the recap for you here.

click to read more about Travis Hagey's research

A glimpse at the variation in gecko toepads

Starting off in one of the first sessions was a talk by Travis Hagey titled “Independent Origins, Tempo, and Mode of Adhesive Performance Evolution Across Padded Lizards.” Although his talk was mostly about geckos, he did shine the spotlight on anoles for a few minutes. He focused on the phylogenetic pattern of toepad adhesion in pad-bearing lizards: geckos, skinks, and anoles. Specifically he looked at how clinging ability (measured as angular detachment – check out one of his videos showing this) varied within and among clades. Unsurprisingly, he found that anoles don’t cling nearly as well as geckos. He also demonstrated that gecko toepad diversification best followed a Brownian motion model with weak OU and anole toepad diversification was best fit by a strong Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process. In other words, gecko toepads diversified slowly over a very long period while anoles were quickly drawn towards an optimum over a short time-period. Travis concluded that these patterns explain why there is a large amount of diversity in gecko toepads but not in anole toepads.

Next up was Joel McGlothlin, who also gave a non-anole talk titled “Multiple origins of tetrodotoxin‐resistant sodium channels in squamates.”

Great Egret Eating a Crested Anole in Miami, FL

By James T. Stroud

On April 1, 2015

In Introduced Anoles, Natural History Observations, Notes from the Field

Here is a video taken by University of Miami PhD student Joanna Weremijewicz at the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Gardens in Miami, FL last Friday (20th March 2015). There have been lots of posts talking about the predation potential of egrets (and other wading birds) on anoles here on AA similar to this (1,2,3,4), but I think this could be the first one recording predation of A. cristatellus? Cool video!

Fill In The Blank: Obscure Anole Life History Traits

By Andrew Durso

On June 27, 2013

In Ask the Experts

In collaboration with the Conservation Biology course taught by Dr. Karen Beard here at Utah State University, where I am a Ph.D. student, I have been involved in gathering life history data on ~400 species of reptiles that have been introduced outside of their native ranges for an analysis of how life history traits (e.g., diet, fecundity, longevity) interact with other factors to influence the likelihood of successful establishment. Appendix A of Fred Kraus’ 2009 book Alien Reptiles and Amphibians is the source of the species list we are using, and included in this analysis are 26 species of Anolis. This is where you come in.

First, we coded all anoles as (i) sexually-dichromatic, (ii) diurnal, (iii) non-venomous, (iv) oviparous, (v) omnivores that lack (vi) temperature-dependent sex determination and (vii) parthenogenesis. Is anyone aware of any exceptions to these seven generalizations?

Second, we searched for data on clutch size, clutch frequency, incubation time, and longevity. The Anole Classics section of this site and the Biodiversity Heritage Library were particularly useful. After conducting what I feel to be a pretty thorough literature scavenger hunt, I am forced to conclude that some of these data simply do not exist at the species level for all of the species we’re interested in, or are not explicitly stated in a way that is obvious to a non-anole-expert. Of course, there is a lot of literature, including many books that I don’t have access to, and there are also lots of credible observations that don’t get published. I’m hoping that some of the readership here can help fill in at least some of the blanks in the table below. As one member of the team, I did not collect all of the data that are filled in myself, nor have I personally vetted every value, so if you spot an error please do point it out.

Two important points:

Many environmental factors obviously influence the life history parameters of our beloved and wonderfully plastic reptiles, so we appreciate that many of these values would be better represented by ranges and are dependent on latitude, altitude, climate, and many other factors. Where a range is published, we are using its median value.
I should also emphasize that, because of the large size of this study and the diversity of taxa included (ranging in size from giants like Burmese Pythons, Nile Crocodiles, and Aldabra Tortoises to, well, anoles and blindsnakes), it is more important for the data to reflect the relative values of these life history parameters across all anoles (and all reptiles) than it is to specifically and precisely represent all known variation within a given species of anole.

Without further ado (for your enjoyment, and because I know from my own blog that nobody reads posts lacking pictures, I’ve embedded an image of each species):

Species	Median clutch size	Median clutches per year	Incubation time (days)	Maximum longevity (months)
A. aeneus	2
A. baleatus
A.bimaculatus	2		43	84
A. carolinensis	1.15	6	41.5	65
A.chlorocyanus	1	18
A. conspersus	1
A. cristatellus	2.5	18		83
A. cybotes	1	18	45
A. distichus	1	16	45.5
A. equestris	1	1	48	149
A. extremus
A. ferreus	1	18
A. garmani	1.5	18	67
A. grahami	1
A. leachii
A. lineatus
A. lucius	1	3.5	60
A. marmoratus	2		50
A. maynardi
A. porcatus	1	18	63.5
A. pulchellus	1
A. richardii	1
A. sagrei	2	20	32	22
A. stratulus
A. trinitatis	2		50
A. wattsi	1

Thanks in advance. I think this is a great blog and I hope to post something more interesting on here soon.

A Second Front in the Sagrei-Cristatellus Wars: Anolis Sagrei Arrives in Costa Rica

By Jonathan Losos

On September 27, 2011

In Introduced Anoles

Not content with kicking butt in Florida, Anolis sagrei has recently been reported from the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Photo by Melissa Losos.

Anole Annals has previously reported on the ongoing interactions between A. cristatellus and A. sagrei in Miami (for example, here and cool video here), as well as the invasion of Costa Rica by A. cristatellus. Now the plot has thickened.

In a 2009 paper in Zootaxa, Savage and Bolaños reported that A. sagrei had been collected in the vicinity of Limon, the same region in which A. cristatellus also has been introduced. Jay Savage has kindly provided further information that A. sagrei is not only common in some parts of central Limon, where A. cristatellus is also known to be common, but it is also reported to be common at a Shell gas station in the nearby town of Moin, a town in which, again, A. cristatellus is common. It will be interesting to see how rapidly A. sagrei spreads in Costa Rica, and how the two species interact. One interesting twist: in Miami, it is A. cristatellus that has invaded in the presence of an already well-established A. sagrei; in Costa Rica, the table is turned. There’s a great research project waiting to be done here!

Measuring Bite Force In Anoles: The Video

By Jonathan Losos

On September 21, 2011

In New Research

The latest anole flick from Day’s Edge Productions. If you haven’t seen some of their previous work, try this one. And for an interview about this film with filmmaker and UCLA grad student Neil Losin, go here.

Thermal Ecology of Anolis cristatellus

By Rich Glor

On July 8, 2011

In New Research

The recent literature has been full of doom and gloom regarding the prospects for lizard survival in the face of global climate change (e.g., Sinervo et al. 2010). A talk by Alex Gunderson from Manuel Leal’s lab at Duke University provided some important new insights on how our favorite lizards are likely to weather this storm. Gunderson investigated thermal ecology of Anolis cristatellus at nine localities, including four mesic and five xeric locales. His data included thousands of field collected temperature records from live animals and copper models as well as data on preferred body temperature and sprint speed performance across a range of temperatures. Temperature data from live animals and co-distributed copper models showed that the xeric, but not the mesic, populations are behavioral thermoregulators that tend to be found in cooler spots than the randomly placed copper models. Even with the benefit of behavioral thermoregulation, the xeric forest lizards were consistently active at temperatures that exceeded their preferred body temperature. When Gunderson integrated these findings with data on sprint speed performance and climate change, he found that the xeric forest animals are likely to suffer significant reductions in performance associated with climate change. Gunderson ended with a teaser by showing that he has accumulated comparable data on performance across a range of temperatures for all the other Puerto Rican anoles. Next year’s talk should be a blockbuster!

Sagrei – Cristatellus Interactions in Miami

By Jonathan Losos

On July 1, 2011

In Introduced Anoles, Notes from the Field

Anolis cristatellus in Miami. Photo by Melissa Losos

In his spare time, photographer and film-maker extraordinaire Neil Losin doubles as a graduate student studying the ecological interactions between introduced trunk-ground anoles A. sagrei and A. cristatellus in Miami. He’s just begun his third field season, and you can read all about it here.

The Ability of Anoles to Acclimate to Dry Conditions

By Jonathan Losos

On June 14, 2011

In New Research

Lizard in an Evolutionary Tree's reworking of Williams' classic figure. Note that A. gundlachi is a trunk-ground anole, not, as indicated, a trunk-crown anole.

In this famous figure, Ernest Williams sketched out his view of how anole diversification occurred on the Greater Antilles, using Puerto Rico as an example. First, species diverge to use different structural habitat, producing the different ecomorphs. Subsequently, within-ecomorph divergence produces species that use the same structural habitat, but which occupy different climatic micro-climates, ranging from cool and moist rainforest to blazing hot and dry semi-desert. This two-stage pattern of evolution is displayed not only on Puerto Rico, but also on Cuba and Hispaniola (Jamaica, the most species deprived island, has little within ecomorph diversity).

In contrast to the plenitude of research in recent years on the adaptive basis of morphological differences among the ecomorphs, relatively little work has focused on the extent to which closely related species—members of the same ecomorph class—have adapted to occupying different microclimates.

Introduced Herps of the Caribbean

By Jonathan Losos

On May 14, 2011

In Introduced Anoles

The knight anole, Anolis equestris, gets around more than you might think. Photo by Neil Losin.

A new, two-volume set on the conservation of Caribbean herps has just been published. More on that in a minute, but let’s cut to the important stuff. There’s a great summary of the record of anole introductions (discussed previously a number of times on Anole Annals, such as here, here, here and here) in an article by Bob Powell and others. Here’s what they have to say about anoles:

“Anoles (family Polychrotidae). Anoles are highly diverse (Losos, 2009), quite adaptable, and often function as human commensals. Many species in the region exploit buildings, ornamental plants, and the night-light niche (e.g., Henderson and Powell, 2001, 2009; Perry et al., 2008; Powell and Henderson, 2008). Some are colorful and available in the pet trade (e.g., Kraus, 2009), but nearly all introductions within our region were inadvertent and attributable to stowaways in cargo such as building materials and ornamental plants.

Anolis cristatellus is native to the Puerto Rico Bank and was the only anole that made the list of most successful colonizing species (Bomford et al., 2009).

Results of the Costa Rica cristatellus Expedition

By Jonathan Losos

On January 5, 2011

In Classics from the Literature, Notes from the Field

Map from http://www.costaricamapproject.com/InfoMaps/topographic.html

I’ve completed the brief survey of the distribution of A. cristatellus in Costa Rica (see previous post for explanation). The work was hampered by rainy and cool weather. Nonetheless, several new localities were identified. In particular, we found cristatellus in Bribri, very close to the Panamanian border. We actually went to the border town of Sixaolo, and even walked across the bridge, setting foot in Panama for a full 90 seconds (border officials apparently routinely allow tourists across the border to take a photo). However, by that time, the weather was very overcast and cool, and no lizards were out. Were I a betting man, I’d wager that cristatellus is already in the land of the canal.