New Specimens Of The Interesting Anolis Salvini

In an interesting new paper in the journal Checklist (subtitled, the “journal of “species lists and distribution”), Bienentreu et al. report on 28 new specimens of A. salvini from western Panama.  On its face, the paper is simply a description of many new specimens of a little known species. But lurking within are a variety of fascinating tidbits.

First, A. salvini is a member of the pentaprion clade of twig anole-like mainland species. The authors note that previous work by Köhler subsumed A. vociferans into A. salvini, but no one seems to have noticed—maybe this paper will help.

Second, and perhaps most interesting, the authors note extensive variation in dewlap color within this species, as illustrated in the figure above: e-h are males, and i-l are females.This variation is striking and worthy of further investigation.

Lastly, third, the authors note that the species vocalizes when handled, and even provide a spectrogram. Very few anoles make sounds, a topic which has received very little attention.

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Jonathan Losos

Professor of Biology and Director of the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in Saint Louis. I've spent my entire professional career studying anoles and have discovered that the more I learn about anoles, the more I realize I don't know.

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