If this is Ron Paul, what ecomorph is Rick Santorum?
Holy smokes! It turns out that Republican electoral dynamics are completely explicable by reference to…Anolis lizard community ecology! So says noted Stanford ecologist Marc Feldman. Santorum, Paul and Romney are specialized to use different niches, and Gingrich apparently is a generalist that is having trouble competing with the specialists. Given that Feldman is from Stanford, he probably had the Lesser Antilles in mind, given the work of Joan Roughgarden. But given that there are three extant “specialists,” and that the Lesser Antilles never sport more than two species, comparison to the Greater Antilles is probably more apt, which leads to the question: which ecomorph do each of the candidates represent?
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J James
Romney – A. carolinensis (un-clearly)
Gingrich – A. achilles (if you still call them that)
Santorum – A. sagrei (molts in pieces)
Paul – A. lineatus (the solitary one)
Luke Harmon
I see the three-species problem – but how can we not see echos of Roughgarden’s taxon cycle in the constant turnover of front-runners, followed by their extinction from the race?
Daniel Scantlebury
If only they were mainland anoles – secretive, timid, skittish, and eaten by monkeys.
Brad Lister
Are any of the aquatic anoles bottom feeders? If so, then they get my vote for any or all of the candidates.
Ramon E. Martínez-Grimaldo
In Mexico the same with their candidates