Puerto Rican Anole Diet Samples Available to a Good Home

Anolis evermanni on the boulders in the stream at the El Verde Field Station. Photo by Jonathan Losos

My former postdoc advisor and AA co-founder Jonathan Losos recently reminded me that I left some unused samples in a drawer in the lab that he has now moved out of.

In 2012, I spent some time in Puerto Rico, collecting niche data for six anole species (A. cristatellus, A. evermanni, A. gundlachi, A. krugi, A. pulchellus and A. stratulus) among other things. I collected some samples for stomach content and stable isotope analysis that I never got around to processing before I moved on to the next postdoc. As I’m now based in New Zealand and back to working on fish, it’s not worth the complications of importing samples that I don’t have immediate plans to use.

Anolis gundlachi. Photo by Travis Ingram.

At Jonathan’s suggestion, I am making the samples available to any anologists who can give them a good home. The data are unlikely to lead to anything groundbreaking, but could make for a nice integrated study of niche partitioning and could be a good student project for someone.

The samples contain:

• Stomach contents from at least 30 anoles of each of the six species, obtained via gastric lavage and stored in ethanol in eppendorf tubes.
• Tail tips taken for stable isotope analysis, dried and stored in eppendorf tubes.
• Dried tissue samples from herbivorous (katydids x 10) and detritivorous (land snails x 10) invertebrates to use as isotopic baselines.
• Additional pieces of the same tail tips, stored in ethanol in Eppendorf tubes, which could be used for genetics if needed.

The samples should still be in good shape, though they’ve spent the last six years boxed up in a drawer. All the anoles were released live, so I don’t have specimens. However, for each individual I have recorded:

• collection date, GPS location and elevation
• environmental temperature
• body (cloacal) temperature
• perch height and diameter
• body orientation and position in sun vs shade
• sex and SVL

The idea behind collecting these data was to quantify how much of the variation in different niche dimensions was attributable to differences between ecomorphs (trunk-crown, trunk-ground and grass-bush), between species (two species per ecomorph), and between sexes. I would be happy to donate the samples to someone who can make good use of them, or to collaborate with someone who would like to follow up on this small project idea.

If you are interested in taking over the samples, please get in touch with me in the next couple of weeks (after that they will likely be disposed of).

Travis (email)

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Travis Ingram

I mostly study freshwater fish ecology and evolution in New Zealand, but I spent two years as a postdoc in the Losos lab looking at the niches of Puerto Rican anoles and working on comparative methods for studying convergence.

Latest posts by Travis Ingram (see all)

• A Hierarchy of Niches in Puerto Rican Anoles - July 27, 2022
• Puerto Rican Anole Diet Samples Available to a Good Home - October 19, 2018
• Anoles Are Habitat Specialists at the Individual Level Too - January 16, 2017