Yesterday at JMIH, Phillip Pearson reported results from work conducted with his thesis adviser at the University of Alabama, Birmingham Daniel Warner. Pearson investigated the impact of incubation environment on the brown anole (Anolis sagrei), and the effects of incubation in shaded versus open habitat and early versus late season in particular. Pearson reported several significant differences between the eggs (and resulting hatchlings) incubated under these two conditions. He specifically reported longer incubation intervals under early season and shaded conditions, smaller hatchling size under shaded conditions and better performance of hatchlings at 1 and 3 weeks for the eggs incubated under the late season regime. Performance of hatchlings was quantified as their speed and the number of times they stopped during a performance trial. This work is the latest in a string of interesting studies from the Warner Lab on the impact of incubation conditions on anoles. I was going to provide links to previous posts on Anole Annals about the Warner Lab‘s work, but there are so many that I’ll just suggest that you type “Warner” into the search box at the top of the page and enjoy for yourself.
- 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
Thomas Sanger
The Warner lab is doing some great stuff and this follows right in step.
It might require huge sample sizes, but it would also be awesome to know if more teratologies are induced at higher incubation temperatures.