The ubiquity of Brown Anoles (Anolis sagrei) in Florida means that they are constantly on my mind. Given the proposition that rapid evolution may be important to invasive species success, I was curious to determine if invasive Brown Anoles in the southeastern United States, centered in Florida, have any morphological differences from Brown Anoles in their native range in Cuba. To address this question, I measured museum specimens to compare Brown Anole morphology between their invasive and native range and “go back in time” to see if Brown Anole morphology has changed since their invasion.
As reported in our recent paper, Brown Anoles have broadly similar morphology between their native Cuban and invasive Florida ranges. Additionally, we found no clear evidence of the measured morphological traits changing over time. These results suggest that rapid morphological evolution may not be essential to the success of invasive Brown Anoles.
Abstract:
Understanding why some species and not others are successful global invaders is an important question in ecology and evolutionary biology. There is much debate on the role that rapid post-invasion adaptation plays in the success of invasive species. Here, we investigated signals of rapid and broad-scale morphological evolution in Anolis sagrei (Brown Anole) between their invasive and native distributions. Although we found significant differences in a few morphological characters between invasive and native Brown Anoles, the morphological variation present in the species broadly overlapped between both populations and has not significantly changed over the last century. These results suggest the invasive success of Brown Anoles in Florida may not be due to major evolutionary change from their Cuban ancestors.
Dorothy Patent
I live on the island of Kaua’i, where brown anoles live in a variety of unconnected habitats, from brushy areas with no trees to black lava rock walls along walking trails to mixed forests. When I go for walks, I see these ‘guys’ often and they vary greatly in their external appearance, from pure almost black with no stripe (lava wall dwellers) to “grass-bush”-like individuals with prominent back stripes and long toes and tails and brown patterned bodies in landscaped areas. Near where I live, the latter-patterned individuals position themselves on the curbs lining the road and dart into the undergrowth when disturbed. I see a project for a grad student who loves to surf in this situation!