Year: 2011 Page 1 of 42

How are feet adapted to cling to different surfaces?

Last summer I accompanied Martha Muñoz on her trip to the DR. Earlier this month I came to Harvard to present an overview of her study of thermoregulation in the cybotes clade of anoles at various locations and altitudes, and I got to meet some members of the Losos Lab. The work we did on the trip interested me a lot and since then I’ve decided to pursue a research project of my own. I studied Prof. Losos’ book Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree looking for areas where he suggests opportunities for future work, and compiled a list. Since then, Martha has helped me to zero in on 2 or 3 areas in which I could do some work (these include clinging ability and parasite load). In the meantime, I’d like to share the list of possibilities with everyone. (Click here.)

Happy New Year!

Anole morphology holds an important place in the recent history of evolutionary biology. For example, comparisons of morphology, behavior, and ecology among Anolis species led E. E. Williams to conceptualize ecomorphology (discussed here). The repeated Caribbean anole radiations are also of great importance for studies of convergence, parallelism, and constraint (e.g., here and here). Surprisingly, however, the vast majority of anole research has focused on postcranial characters; comparatively few studies have surveyed variation in head shape and its functional and ecological significance. While strong correlations between relative limb length and microhabitat have been the subject of much research, one cannot overlook the fact that variation in head shape may also have important ecological and evolutionary significance for this genus.

Even a brief visual survey of the MCZ skeletal collection reveals an array of variation in anole head shape: from the robust skull of A. cybotes to the slender skull of A. dolichocephalus to the ornate skulls of Chamaeleolis (Here is a real challenge: Can anyone name the species in the picture?). Harmon et al. (2005) used three-dimensional geometric morphometrics for 21 anole species and concluded that anole heads primarily vary in relative length and depth. To further investigate which skeletal elements contribute to this variation and how many times anoles have independently converged on similar head shapes Sanger et al. recently analyzed skull shape variation among males of 106 Caribbean species (yes, Sanger, that’s me).

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