Photo by Manuel Leal from chipojolab.blogspot.com
Read all about them here.
Year: 2011 Page 24 of 42
CAnolis is a freely downloadable visualization app for learning about Caribbean anole evolution, built using the Processing programming language. Its main purpose is to help teachers of evolution explain convergence and adaptive radiation to high school
and college students. It does so by allowing viewers to click on an island and see where on the phylogeny species in different ecomorphs occur.
Fernando Racimo, creator of the App, explains how it came to be: “The inspiration for the program came after taking a Herpetology class at Harvard, but I didn’t have the means to create it until a friend introduced me to a visually-oriented Java-based programming
language called Processing. I obtained the list of anoles and the clade phylogeny from Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree, while the ecomorph drawings came from a classroom exercise available at the University of California Museum of Paleontology’s website and mentioned earlier in the Anole Annals. My objective was to link island distribution,
phylogenetic placement and ecological adaptation into a single interactive program that made it easy for users to understand how different species of anoles evolved in each island. Jonathan Losos, Mickey Eagleson and Sami Majadla kindly provided advice on how best to display the information.”
The App can be downloaded here:
CAnolis for Mac: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17593686/CAnolis%20for%20Mac.zip
CAnolis for Windows: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17593686/CAnolis%20for%20Windows.zip
Please email fernandoracimo@gmail.com if you have any comments or suggestions for improvements.
From Shufeldt, 1883.
From Danielle Steel’s latest romance novel:
“We have not far to go, indeed, to find our bi-colored masquerader; see the emerald-clad scamp as he eyes you from the brawny limb of the pecan, under which you stand. But what is he up to! You quietly watch him, and his employment seems to be of such a nature that he soon completely ignores you, and proceeds with it at all risks, and at all costs. The mystery is soon solved, and we can readily appreciate this agitation, this bowing and strutting, and all manner of quaint motions, as if the very last drop of his quaint lacertilian blood was on fire—for coyishly, and with all due deference, reclines before his lordship, his chosen mate, exerting all her chameleonic powers to hide her blushes by vain endeavors to match the colored pattern at her command. He can withstand her charms no longer, and for the moment, laying aside all dignity, and the object of his affections not unwillingly submitting, in the next instant finds herself in the passionate embraces of her lord, who, to make sure that he has actually won his coveted prize, winds about her lithe form, perhaps in some mystic love-knot, his entire caudal extremity, and blinds her eyes, first on one side and then on the other, by extension of the flaming ornament at his throat.”
Ok, you can’t actually find this on the bookstand at the local grocery store. Rather, it’s from a paper by a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, R.W. Shufeldt, published in the American Naturalist in 1883. Romantic interludes notwithstanding, the paper presents a remarkably accurate and detailed report of the natural history of A. carolinensis (in which he referred to the green anole as the American chameleon, Anolis principalis).
Lots of anole action at the herp meetings starting on Wednesday in Minneapolis. Listed below are the talks and posters found by searching for “anol” in the online program abstract. If you know of others, please let us know. And…if you’re going to attend the meetings, how about posting on the talks and posters, so those of us not in the northlands can stay up to speed? Abstracts can be found by going here (I just read through them–some great stuff!).
Talks (NOTE: Gunderson’s talk on thermal ecology of A. cristatellus was originally scheduled for Saturday, but has just been rescheduled for Friday at 2:30 in Conrad B & C)
Friday, 2:30 pm: Alex Gunderson. Geographic Variation in the Thermal Ecology and Physiology of Anolis cristatellus and its Implications in a Changing World
Saturday, 2 pm: Rich Glor. Phylogenetics and Diversification of Anolis Lizards
Sunday, 8:45 am: A. Reedy. Maternal Nest-site Choice in the Lizard Anolis sagrei: A Unique Research-based Educational Model for Youth at an Urban High School
Sunday, 2:45 pm: J. Deitloff. Hemipenes vs. Dewlaps: Which Morphological Characters Can be Used to Delineate Species in Anoles?
Sunday, 2:45 pm: H. Waddle. Brown Anole Presence Reduces Occupancy of Green Anoles in Southern Florida Natural Areas
Posters:
Saturday, Poster 14: J. Phillips. Evolutionary and Biogeographic Relationships Among Species of the Anolis humilis Complex
Saturday, Poster 15: J. Davis. A phylogenetic analysis of the Anolis pentaprion Species Group
Saturday, Poster 16: J. Gubler. Investigation of the Evolutionary Relationships Among Species of the Anolis limifrons Complex
Saturday, Poster 75: A. Geneva. A Multi-locus Molecular Phylogeny of Distichoid Anoles
Saturday, Poster 76. S. Lambert. Molecular Systematics of Hispaniolan Crown-giant Anoles
Sunday, Poster 21: M. Moody. Egg Environments have Large Effects on Embryonic Development, but have Minimal Consequences for Fitness-Related Phenotypes in a Lizard (Anolis sagrei)
Sunday, Poster 35: M. Zhuang. Comparative Gliding Performance of Anolis carolinensis and Anolis sagrei
Sunday, Poster 44: P. Cupp. Responses of ground skinks, Scincella lateralis, and Green anoles, Anolis carolinensis, to Chemical Deposits of Eastern Milk Snakes, Lampropeltis triangulum
The newspaper article to announce the actions to eradicate brown anoles (Anolis sagrei) in Santzepu, Sheishan District, Chiayi County, Taiwan.
On the 28th of April, 2011, I posted an article here in AA about the actions of the Taiwanese authorities to try and remove Anolis sagrei in Chiayi County. On the 25th of June, 2011, it was announced that they have acquired more funding (they ran out of funds previously) and that they will continue with these actions this year.
The alarming part is how they (whoever wrote the article) mislead the public, who believes in what is said in the newspapers, by providing incorrect information in the article.
They report that in the past two years 127,458 brown anoles were removed, and since the past winter was colder than usual, they believe they can eradicate this species by again paying the public a bounty of N.T.$ 20 (ca. U.S.$ 0.70) for every lizard they collect. I am confident they will run out of funds again, and the brown anole will persist! I am also convinced that something other than conservation is driving these actions.
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.
From a remote corner of Anole Nation comes the photo above and its identification as part of the anole clan. Yeah or nay?
Rich Glor has thrown down the gauntlet. Who can name the five anoles pictured on the CaribHerp poster in the last post? I know what they are, but I had to get help on #5, which does not sport the typical look for that species (and the esteemed Dr. Glor’s guesses are incorrect).
Caribherp is a website devoted to all herpetologic matters West Indian. It describes itself as follows:
Caribherp contains information on amphibians and reptiles of the Caribbean Islands (West Indies). It serves as a checklist of what occurs in the region as well as a quick identification guide to the species. Approximately 2000 images and maps, and selected frog calls (sounds), are presented along with an integrated open-access journal, Caribbean Herpetology. The journal accepts color images and video and currently publishes brief communications on individual species—later volumes will include full research articles. The species accounts can be sorted in many ways. Maps of the Caribbean, both current and historical, can be found on a separate site, Caribmap. Multimedia essays related to conservation issues on Caribbean islands are on a third site, Caribnature.
The poster above and a similar one can be obtained here on the “Resources” page.
Range map for Anolis aliniger (triangles) and Anolis bahorucoensis (cirlces).
Do you ever stop and think about how long it must have taken Schwartz and Henderson to make all those amazing dot maps in their 1991 opus on West Indian amphibians and reptiles? They plotted known localities for every species of West Indian amphibian and reptile in the days before GPS and GIS! These days, making dot maps of species distributions is considerably less onerous, but often requires the use of cumbersome, expensive, and PC-only programs like ArcGIS. For the past couple of weeks, some folks in my lab – Daniel Scantlebury, Anthony Geneva, and Shea Lambert – have been attempting to make nice distribution maps for Caribbean anoles and other reptiles using the R statistical computing framework (R has a pretty steep learning curve for beginners, but it’s flexible, scriptable, free, and cross-platform). The results so far are pretty exciting. If you have a list of georeferenced localities, you can overlay these points on a very detailed political map in a matter of seconds. We’re just beginning to learn how to tap R’s map making potential and would love to hear from others doing the same! Technical details after the jump…