Year: 2012 Page 8 of 47

Darwin Day Herp Tour, Museum of Comparative Zoology, 2011

Attention Boston-area Anolophiles – This Friday, November 9th, the Harvard University Biological Sciences Society (HUBSS) is hosting its annual Night at the Museum event! This free and recurring event at the Harvard Museum of Natural History features plenty of tasty treats, exciting exhibits, and exclusive behind-the-scenes tours of the research collections in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Although the event is sponsored and hosted by the undergraduate society, interested members of the public are welcome to participate.

As part of this event, I will be giving two free tours of the Herpetology collections. I love working for these events because I get to display my favorite pieces from our amazing collections, including enormous croc skulls, strange and rare reptiles, and, naturally, a dizzying array of anoles. Anoles will be featured prominently in my tours as I use them to illustrate the principles of convergent evolution and to talk about island biogeography. Visitors will get to participate in a team activity using Anolis specimens. If you’re in the area, how else would you rather spend a Friday night than learning about anoles?

Check out the HUBSS website for this event and I hope to see you there!

Electoral Map Awash In Blue In Anole Photo Contest

By Jonathan Losos

On November 7, 2012

In Anole Photographs

Well, the election is finally over, and the electoral results are awash with the color blue. More than 300 votes were cast in the semi-finals round, and then an all-star panel chose our winners from the top 12 in the popular vote. Perhaps surprisingly (perhaps not), the hoi polloi and the experts identified the same top three photos.

So now, with no further ado, the winner of the 2012 Anole Photo Contest is…

Oliver The Over-Achieving Anole: The Book

By Jonathan Losos

On November 6, 2012

In Anole Art, Literature, and Humor

Another entry into the ever-expanding genre of anole literature. Check out snippets of the book. Amazon.com describes the book thusly: “From the moment of his hatching, in a flowerpot high above the ground, Oliver Anole saw the world as a game and an adventure. His spirit of play and love of creating spreads through the anole world, as just by being himself, he is able to inspire others to be inventive and create the lives they enjoy. I wrote Oliver the Overachiever to encourage children to celebrate their individuality and sense of community. I wanted to illustrate, through story and pictures, that a small person can create great effects that can change his world for the better.” And as for the author, “Karin Mesa has worked for the past nineteen years as a designer of decorative glass. She lives on the west coast of Florida with her husband, glass artist, Julian Mesa. Their studio, located in a one acre garden, provides the inspiration of nature that Karin has always used for her illustrations. Throughout her life observing nature has been fuel for Karin s imagination. Jagged tree stumps in a snowy winter became elven castles. Tree frogs nestled among orchid roots whisper of their cozy hidden homes throughout a garden world. Small lives, out of sight to many, are brought to life in water color and pencil. Karin s stories about these small creatures can be applied to their own lives by children, in ways that are real to them as individuals. Karin has stated her purpose in writing and illustrating like this: I hope that in a light and playful way my stories and pictures will encourage children to develop their creativity and sense of adventure. I want them to know the power they have to change things for the better.”

Anole Research Featured In Animal Cognition Documentary

By Jonathan Losos

On November 5, 2012

In Anoles and Anolologists in the News

Manuel Leal’s fascinating studies showing that anoles have more going on than anyone would have expected is featured in a new Canadian TV documentary. The Nature of Things is a well known series hosted by the inimitable David Suzuki. This episode on the cognitive abilities is wide-ranging and has all the usual suspects (chimps, crows, etc.)…and anoles! Not to mention Manuel Leal. Unfortunately, the series can only be accessed online if you’re in Canada, but the rest of us can see a snippet on the post on Chipojolab, as well as a “behind-the-scenes” discussion of the film crew’s visit to Leal’s lab.

Filming in the Leal lab. From chipojolab post.

Documentary On Cuban Anoles

By Ramon E. Martinez-Grimaldo

On November 3, 2012

In All Posts

Watch the cuban documentary: ANOLIS: VIGILANTES DE DÍA

In the year 2010, a group of students from the International School of Film and Television from San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba, made a film: “Anolis: Vigilantes of the Day,” an excellent documentary of nine minutes about Cuban anoles. The documentary is narrated in Spanish and has the best aspects of the natural history of these lizards, including some ecomorphs and the use of the dewlap in displays.

Variation In The Hand Structure Of Anoles And Other Lizards: Does Form Follow Function?

By Jonathan Losos

On November 2, 2012

In New Research

Variation in the hand morphology of lizards. The drawings to the right of each foot indicate the arrangement of the tendons. Note that in B (anoles and Polychrus) and C (geckos), the tendons are independent, whereas in the others, they fused into tendenous plates in the palm of the hand.

In a paper in Acta Zoologica, Tulli et al. examine the tendons of the hands of a variety of lizards, including a dozen anole species. Their hypothesis is that differences in tendon struct should reflect ecological adaptation: in arboreal species, the tendons running to each finger (digit) should be independent, allowing great flexibility, whereas in more terrestrial lizards, the tendons should be fused, presumably providing great stability during locomotion at the cost of less agility.

The data show great variation in tendon morphology, with much of the variation falling out along phylogenetic lines. Form B in the figure above corresponds to all anoles and Polychrus. The data provide a suggestion that the authors’ hypothesis is correct, but statistical analyses incorporating phylogenetic information–affected by the similarity of closely-related species–fail to confirm the result.

Marıa J. Tulli, Anthony Herrel, Bieke Vanhooydonck and Virginia Abdala (2012). Is phylogeny driving tendon length in lizards? Acta Zoologica, 93, 319-329 DOI: 10.1111/j.1463-6395.2011.00505.x

How Does An Ant Taste? Apparently Not So Good

By Jonathan Losos

On November 1, 2012

In Natural History Observations

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38KHc6j2-wI&feature=plcp

Hard to come to any other conclusion after observing this video clip of the Big Kahuna shot by John Rahn, right after the brown anole (BK to his friends) ate an ant, and then the spittle flew. Notice, too, the translucent, glowing tail where the sun strikes it–nice effect!

Halloween Anole

By Jonathan Losos

On October 31, 2012

In All Posts

It’s Halloween, so we thought we’d celebrate by putting up a scary anole image. You’d think the internet would be full of photos of spooky anoles, anoles in scary outfits, devil anoles, anole hobgoblins, etc., but you’d be mistaken. In fact, we could only find two appropriate images, and one of them (above) is from last year’s Halloween issue of AA (but still worth a read a year later). The other is a picture of an anole on a jack-o-lantern in Hawaii on flickr; respecting the copyright restriction, we will not reproduce the photo, but you can go check it out yourself.

Today’s important for another reason: it’s the last day of voting for the 2013 Anole Photo contest. If you haven’t already (or if you can trick the system into allowing you to vote again), vote now!

Observations On Two Colombian Endemic Anoles

By Juan Salvador Mendoza

On October 30, 2012

In Anole Photographs, Notes from the Field

Juan Salvador Mendoza

Fundación Kamajorú para la conservación y educación ambiental Barranquilla, Colombia.

Detail of Anolis concolor, San Andres Islas, Colombia; Juan Salvador Mendoza, July 2012.

Anoles (genus Anolis sensu old taxonomy) are one of the most diverse neo-tropical vertebrate groups with more than 200 species. In continental Colombia more than 60 anole species have been registered, including 30 which are endemic (Sanchez et al. 1995). Three more endemic species are known from the insular portion of San Andres and Providencia in the Atlantic Ocean and Malpelo in the Pacific (Sanchez et al. 1995). One of this insular species is A. concolor (Cope, 1836) a relatively medium-sized anole (60-80 mm SVL) that inhabits mangroves and dry forests in the islands of San Andres and Providencia; on the latter island, this species is sympatric with a A. pinchoti which is endemic only to the island of Providencia. In the Pacific, the representative species is A. agassizi from Malpelo Island.

A.concolor. Male, Jardin Botanico, Universidad Nacional, sede Caribe; San Andres Islas, Colombia. Juan Salvador Mendoza 2012

Anolis concolor is a very agile lizard that may use the ground, tree trunks and branches to forage and display courtship and territorial behavior. I observed and photographed several individuals in the “Jardin Botanico, Universidad Nacional de Colombia;” this garden holds more than two hectares of the natural vegetation of the island, tropical dry forest. This lizard can be found in the borders of roads on top of secondary vegetation and can be also found in conserved remnants of mangroves and dry forest. In San Andres this species shares its habitat with a gecko species (Aristelliger georgensis) that may be also found even during the day time in the tree trunks. This is the only anole species in San Andres Island and can be very abundant; I counted 35 individuals in a 1 km forest trail.

Green Anoles Banned In Japan

By Jonathan Losos

On October 29, 2012

In Introduced Anoles, New Research

We’ve had a lot of discussion on AA about invasive anoles. Although some in Hawaii seem hot and bothered about them, only in two places–both in Asia–are governmental entities actually trying to do something about it. And, unfortunately, both such efforts seem to be having a devastating effect on the native fauna. Gerrut Norval has reported on such efforts in Taiwan and how they are leading to the massacre of many native agamid lizards. Now, thanks to sharp-eyed AA reader, anole researcher and—as a fallback career option–ichthyologist, Bruce Collette, we learn of anole control efforts on the Japanese island of Okinawajima.

The current issue of Biological Magazine of Okinawa has just published a paper by Ishikawa et al. on efforts to control introduced A. carolinensis by trapping them in glue traps. Unfortunately, as they note, this trapping has succeeded in capturing–and presumably killing–many times more native geckos than green anoles. The journal is in Japanese and if any of our Japanese readers could provide a synopsis, we’d be very appreciative. However, the abstract is in English and is appended below, along with a photo from the paper of sticky-trapped anoles.