2011 – Page 19 – Anole Annals

A Little Worm “Told” Us …

On August 22, 2011

Studying the brown anole (Anolis sagrei) in Taiwan has presented me with numerous new opportunities, one of which is an introduction into parasitology.

A Kiricephalus pattoni nymph under the skin of a female brown anole (Anolis sagrei), collected in southwestern Taiwan.

The first parasites I found in A. sagrei in Taiwan were relatively large worm-like parasites that are often visible as a lump under the skin of the lizard. Unfortunately, my first samples were lost by the person I had sent them to for identification. But luckily, I found some more, and with the assistance of C.R. Bursey and S.R. Goldberg, the parasites were identified as the nymphs of the pentastome, Kiricephalus pattoni. Together we reported A. sagrei as a new host of this parasite in Taiwan (Norval et al., 2009).

50th Anniversary of Ecomorphology

By Jonathan Losos

On August 22, 2011

In Classics from the Literature

The field of anole ecomorphology was born 50 years ago this month when Bruce Collette published his pathbreaking paper, “Correlations between ecology and morphology in anoline lizards from Havana, Cuba and southern Florida” in the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. It was this paper that first explicitly detailed the relationship between morphology and habitat use in Anolis lizards and this was the start of the research program of Rand, Williams, Schoener and others that today has made Anolis a textbook case of ecomorphological diversification. Indeed, because the term “ecomorph” itself can be traced to Ernest Williams’ classic 1972 paper (see p.56 of Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree), in many respects, this month represents an important landmark in the development of the field of ecological morphology.

So, what did the paper say? The summary says it all: “This paper has attempted to correlate ecology with morphology in six species of Anolis from southern Florida and Havana, Cuba. It is felt that with proper ecological data, valid correlations can be made that can lead to an appreciation of the significance of characters often used in taxonomic analysis. Also, light is shed upon the structural adaptations that allow related sympatric species to occupy the same geographical area without facing deleterious competition. It has been shown that selection has acted so that lizards will usually match the color of their natural background. Examples have been shown to support the idea that peritoneal pigmentation is connected with exposure to radiation. The value of long legs to terrestrial lizards has been shown. Short relative tail length has been correlated with arboreality. The more arboreal members of a group of sympatric species have been shown to be larger and have more lamellae than terrestrial species. Data have been presented to support the contention that increased numbers of lamellae are an adaptation to increased arboreality.”

And who was this Bruce Collette?

Here’s A Man Who Loves Green Anoles

By Jonathan Losos

On August 20, 2011

In All Posts

and who doesn’t?

http://dusttracks.com/2011/08/20/the-green-anole-is-the-hero-the-sweet-tea-is-the-salvation/

Teaching With Anoles, Part 1

By mjohnson216

On August 20, 2011

In Education and Anoles

As the summer is ending and a new semester is beginning, your thoughts may have returned to teaching. I try to use a diversity of taxonomic groups in my lectures and labs, but of course, I find anoles to be useful examples for many topics in the classroom. In my Evolution course, taught each year to biology majors at Trinity University, I focus one laboratory module on anole evolution to teach my students to conduct phylogenetically-informed comparative analyses. Below, I’ll describe the approach I use in my course, and if you would like to see my materials, or adapt them for your own teaching, I’d be happy to share the lab handouts – just email me at michele.johnson[at]trinity.edu.

Many activities in my lecture and lab focus on creating and interpreting phylogenies, and one of my earliest lab sessions teaches students to use parsimony and similarity-based classification to build phylogenies from mammalian morphological traits.

A New Anole — Anolis Lunalis?

By Allison DeVan

On August 19, 2011

In Anole Art, Literature, and Humor

Growing Limbs – But Not the Kind With Leaves.

By Thomas Sanger

On August 18, 2011

In New Research

Stages of limb development for A. sagrei

As lineages rapidly diversify, such as in the history of anoles, does their developmental-genetic architecture constrain the rate or direction of evolutionary change? In other words, could the processes controlling the production of variation, the variation that natural selection acts on, affect patterns of phenotypic evolution by generating some phenotypes more readily than others? While theoretical discussions like these have been prevalent for over a century, developmentally-based constraints were not formalized in the context of modern biology until the 1980’s, fueled by an influential paper by Maynard-Smith and colleagues and the re-synthesis of evolutionary and developmental biology. Since then evo-devologists have been testing the plausibility of developmental constraints by examining the developmental bases of traits that have independently evolved multiple times; phenotypes that have repeatedly evolved using the same mechanisms may be indicative of constraint (because the precise interpretation of these patterns and appropriate level of analysis are contentious I will leave further theoretical discussion of constraint to future conversations).

In a recent paper, for which I am the lead author, we set out to examine whether developmental constraints could have affected diversification of anole limb morphology.

Dominican anoles that bask together, stick together

By Martha Muñoz

On August 17, 2011

In Natural History Observations, Notes from the Field

I am irreparably fond of anoles, but I must admit that they are not the cuddliest of beasts. In fact, they can be downright unfriendly, especially with each other. The mere sight of another male sends anoles into spasms and, when not mating, males and females seem to barely tolerate each other, at best. It would seem that cuddling is best left to mammals and birds, but recent observations would indicate that even the ornery anole has a soft side.

Anolis shrevei mating pair cuddling in Valle Nuevo, Dominican Republic.

A post by Kat Wollenberg on this blog documented two Anolis etheridgei sleeping with their tails intertwined. A follow-up post by Melissa Woolley shows that Anolis gemmosus mating pairs sleep near each other, even if not touching.

But does an anole have to be asleep to show its softer side? In June 2011 I observed an Anolis shrevei mating pair in Valle Nuevo cuddle as they basked one afternoon. It is chilly at 2500 meters, even in the Dominican Republic. It had been a cold morning, and neither the sun nor the lizards had shown themselves until almost noon. But when the sun did peek out from behind the clouds, there was a mass exodus of anoles, which came out from under their rocks to take advantage of the day’s first rays. This little pair came out from under the same rock and sat together for close to an hour. They were touching each other, despite the fact that there seemed to be enough rock to go around. Whether this was coincidence or another mechanism of behavioral thermoregulation, the anoles of the chilly Cordillera Central know how to keep warm.

Anole Annals Trivia: What are We Looking At?

By Rich Glor

On August 16, 2011

In Anole Annals Trivia, Notes from the Field

Invertebrates associated with Hispaniolan anoles. Scale bar in right panel is in millimeters.

The invertebrates in the image above were photographed yesterday in the Dominican Republic. Today’s trivia is related to these invertebrates and consists of three questions:

1. What are these invertebrates and how do they interact with anoles?

2. How many individuals are in the right panel (note: all of these individuals were associated with a single anole)?

3. How do these invertebrates factor into Dominican folklore?

Hybridization in Action?

By Rich Glor

On August 15, 2011

In Notes from the Field

Perhaps this is Anole Annals’ first NSFW post, but the mating event depicted in the photo above was such an exciting observation and photographic opportunity that I can’t help but share. Yesterday we discovered a new contact zone between two phenotypically and genetically distinct populations of Anolis distichus along the Rio Bani (this contact zone is along the river’s eastern bank rather than along its well-traversed western bank). Along a narrow zone of contact (~500 m), green bodied, orange dewlapped populations of A. d. ignigularis come into contact with gray-bodied, yellow dewlapped populations of A. d. ravitergum. While sampling this contact zone, we ran across the copulating pair pictured above. The fact that the male is predominantly gray and the female predominantly green may be an indication that this is a hybridization event between A. d. ravitergum and A. d. ignigularis; genetic analyses on tissue samples collected from the pair will soon provide the answer!

If it is a hybrid pair, its likely to be more successful than others reported recently on anole anoles (e.g., A. carolinensis and A. sagrei); although hybrids between A. d. ignigularis and A. d. ravitergum are rare in nature, our captive mating experiments have yielded hundreds of eggs and offspring from matings between A. d. ravitergum and A. d. ignigularis.

Anolis scriptus- An Archipelagic Anole

By Graham Reynolds

On August 15, 2011

In Notes from the Field

Though they are not as flashy as some of their West Indian relatives, Anolis scriptus, the Southern Bahamas Anole, is an ecologically important and interesting component of the herpetofauna of the distal end of the Bahamas Archipelago. Small and brown to brownish green, they seem to be rarely photographed or discussed, so I thought they deserved a post on Anole Annals. These are individuals from the Turks and Caicos Islands- where they are ubiquitous on most emergent land- from the largest islands at over 290 square km to the smallest rocks with some vegetation. Interestingly, this species has been shown to modify its perch height in response to the presence of predators (more on predation in a later post). When curly-tailed lizards (Leiocephalus psammodromus) are around, the anoles are more arboreal (Smith 1994;1995). However, we have found this to be the case mostly on smaller islands, while on larger islands the anoles will still use the ground and lower tree trunks, even in close proximity to high densities of curly-tailed lizards.

Year: 2011 Page 19 of 42