Where do you work and what do you do?  

I’m a professor of biology at Washington University in Saint Louis. I teach courses on evolution and biodiversity, and I am in charge of a new biodiversity center that is a collaboration between Wash. U., the Saint Louis Zoo, and the Missouri Botanical Garden. 

What aspects of anole biology do you study, and what have you learned? 

I’ve studied anoles for 32 years. In that time, I’ve studied their habitat use, biomechanics, behavior, evolutionary relationships, and many other aspects of their biological diversity. Probably the two key findings from my work—done in collaboration with many students, postdoctoral fellows and colleagues—are that the same set of habitat specialists (a.k.a., “ecomorphs”) have evolved independently on the four islands of the Caribbean in the Greater Antilleans (confirming ideas first put forward by Ernest Williams and Stan Rand) and that anoles adapt rapidly enough that evolution experiments can be conducted in nature, and evolutionary change observed over a small number of years. 

How and why did you start studying anoles? 

I did science projects on anoles in 8th and 12th grades, but it wasn’t until college, when I had the privilege of working with Ernest Williams and Greg Mayer at Harvard, that I learned about them in a serious way. Then, in graduate school, I went through many failed projects before re-discovering anoles on a summer field course offered by the Organization of Tropical Studies in Costa Rica. I’ve worked on anoles ever since. 

What do you love most about studying anoles? 

Not only are they fascinating creatures, but they can be studied in many different ways, allowing a wide variety of approaches to be taken to understand how they live their lives and how they’ve evolved. 

What is your favorite anole species? 

How can I pick just one? Species-for-species, the Jamaican radiation of anoles is the most fabulous, but there are many fabulous species: Anolis vermiculatus comes to mind, the Chamaeleolis clade. There are too many excellent anoles to choose just one…or 10! 

Where can people learn more about you and follow you online? 

Website: Losos Lab website at Washington University

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