We’re just past midway into a week dedicated to discussion on Nicholson et al.’s new monograph on anole classification, biogeography, and ecomode evolution. We kicked off on Monday with posts about the history and potential future of anole taxonomy. On Tuesday and Wednesday we had four new posts about the merits of adopting Nicholson et al.’s proposed generic revision. George Gorman and Jonathan Losos argued in favor of retaining the traditional classification that places all anoles in Anolis. Todd Jackman and Craig Guyer, meanwhile, provided arguments in favor of dividing anoles among the eight genera proposed by Nicholson et al. It seems premature to try to summarize the resulting discussion, so I hope readers will take the time to check out the posts and associated comments for themselves.
Remember also that its not too late to contribute to the discussion with posts or comments of your own! We never censor posts or comments on the basis of scientific content, but remind members of our community of the importance of keeping the discussion civil and scientific. We’ve post-poned the scheduled posts on time calibration and ecomode evolution to encourage further discussion of the taxonomic issues.
For readers just joining the discussion, I share some links to prior discussions at Anole Annals pertaining to the Nicholson et al. monograph below the fold.
What’s In A Name?, Part II – Luke Mahler
What’s In A Name?: Scientific Name Use For Anoles, By The Numbers – Luke Mahler
Anolis Electrum: The Amber Anole From Mexico – Jonathan Losos
More On Nicholson et al. 2012: Let’s Look At Their Methodology – Rosario Castañeda
The Case For Splitting Up Anolis – Anole Annals editors
Anolis: Should It Stay Or Should It Go? – Thom Sanger
The Proposal To Split Anolis Into Eight Genera: Time To Discuss – Jonathan Losos
News Flash: New Study Proposes Splitting Anolis Into Eight Genera – Jonathan Losos
- JMIH 2014: Early Records of Fossil Anolis from the Oligocene and Miocene of Florida, USA - August 13, 2014
- JMIH 2014: Relative Contribution of Genetic and Ecological Factors to Morphological Differentiation in Island Populations of Anolis sagrei - August 7, 2014
- JMIH 2014: The Ultrastructure of Spermatid Development within the Anole, Anolis sagrei - August 5, 2014
Skip Lazell
Of course I agree with Marc Tollis: excellently articulated argument….
Peter Mudde
Being from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, my ‘common lizards’ are Lacertids. They used to be all called Lacerta ( well, even newts and crocodiles once were named ‘Lacerta’ ). In the 1970’s/ 1980’s the genus Lacerta ( sensu Boulenger) was split up. That caused some turmoil, but Podarcis and Gallotia became household names. I don’t think the study of Podarcis muralis has been hampered in any way by this renaming. On the contrary, in my opinion, once the clade Podarcis had been given its own genus and was named accordingly, relationships between species became clearer. That is both systematic relations and the ecological relations. For a given area, knowing that there lived Lacerta sicula, Lacerta trlineata and Lacerta meliselensis, somehow was less informative then knowing there lived Podaris sicula, Lacerta trilineata and Podarcis meliselensis.
Now as an occasional visitor to Costa Rica, I have similar feelings towards the names Norops and Dactyloa. I saw three different ‘types’ of anoline lizards running around in CR. It made more sense to me to learn that those three ‘types’ actually represent evolutionary clades when they were named accordingly, then when they were all called Anolis. Just like with the Lacerta/Podarcis-split, once the genus-name is properly attributed, differences and similarities seemed more evident to me.
Now, splitting and naming can easily be overdone -the Lacertids are a good example of that, it sometimes seems as if every branch of the phylogeny is to be named-, but lumping does obscure a lot.
I have been reading most of this discussion with the Lacerta/Podarcis/Gallotia -split and it’s effects in mind. I wonder about the analogies. I haven’t seen the ‘lacertid community’ split as a result of the split, but then Lacertids do not display such nice ecomophological differences as anoles do. But generally I wonder what could be learned from other splitting and renaming events in saurology.
Rich Glor
Good points Peter.