Where do you work and what do you do?  

 I’m a retired Associate Professor at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, FL. While at FSC from 2007 through 2016, I conducted research and taught courses in animal behavior, zoology, evolution, and ecology, as well as a capstone course in undergraduate research. I also took students to Jamaica and Bermuda to conduct field research on anoles.

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

 I’ve worked mainly on the production and perception of color and motion displays. Most of this research has been conducted collaboratively with my colleague Dave Clark and has been experimental in nature, e.g., video playbacks and anole robots. Leo Fleishman’s work on Anolis sensory ecology has been a major influence on my thinking about how lizards perceive their color displays. I’ve learned that working on anole behavior can be challenging and that, in fact, most experiments fail! But I’ve also learned that it is well worth the effort in the end.

How and why did you start studying anoles? 

 When I was a kid growing up in the 1950’s and 1960’s in central Pennsylvania, individual Anolis carolinensis used to be sold at the circus in little “animal cracker” boxes. I still remember bringing one home. My father built a small cage for it and tirelessly caught insects for it. Much later, as a postdoc at U.C. Davis in 1992, I was reintroduced to magic of anoles by none other than Jonathan Losos. At that time, Jonathan was a postdoc with Tom Schoener and heard about the video playback work that we were doing in Peter Marler’s Lab. Jonathan was interested in figuring out two things: First, would anoles respond to video recordings of other anoles displaying? And second, if they did respond to video, could anoles discriminate conspecific from heterospecific displays? With our Marler Lab colleague Chris Evans, we showed that A. marcanoi males spent more time displaying in synchrony with video clips of conspecific male displays than heterospecific male (A. cybotes) displays. Soon after that, Judy Stamps and I conducted an even more successful video playback experiment on species recognition, in which we used Anolis grahami from Jamaica as subjects.

What do you love most about studying anoles? 

 What’s not to love? I recall Chris Evans calling them “magnificent beasts”, as well as Duncan Irschick referring to them as “mini gods”. Anoles are endlessly fascinating, and you could never run out of species to research.

What is your favorite anole species? 

 Regarding species that I’ve worked with personally, Anolis grahami is probably my favorite. They are reliable performers in behavioral experiments and are always up to the challenge of responding to another anole (or a video of one, or an anole robot!). There are two runners up, however. Anolis conspersus with its blue dewlap (actually a UV-reflecting dewlap whose wavelengths extend into the blue range) is quite photogenic, as a number of contributors to Anole Annals have noted. The other runner up would be Anolis extremus. Their complex color pattern is exceptional, and although they are frustratingly squirrelly to approach in the field, male tail lifting contests can be spectacular. Anolis extremus really are extreme!

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

Website: www.macedonialab.com

Anthony J Geneva
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