Professor of Biology and Director of the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in Saint Louis. I've spent my entire professional career studying anoles and have discovered that the more I learn about anoles, the more I realize I don't know.
Photo from Daffodil’s Photo Blog
Photo from Daffodil’s Photo Blog
Photo-chronicler of Floridian natural history Karen Cusick has done it again. We’ve been captivated by her backyard photos before, but here’s photo of a female green anole with sand on its snout. Been digging holes to bury her eggs, maybe? And while Karen observed the little lady lizard, it suddenly darted into the bushed and emerged with a meal!
The plant in question
Well, at least one A. sagrei did. Gavin Hanke’s, Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, BC, reported on the arrival of one stowing away in a tropical plant. Anoles do seem to have a knack of getting around in plants, fruit and other contrivances.
Note: the watch on the bottom right is not one of ours!
It’s that time again. For one day only, Zazzle.com is offering 50% off the Ecomorph line of watches. Sale Code:
COOLZAZSTYLE
And we’re open to suggestions for new species to feature on a lovely wrist fob. Suggest away!
Shane Campbell-Staton had fortuitously measured the thermal physiology of a number of populations of the green anole, Anolis carolinensis, the summer before 2014’s Polar Vortex. So, he went back and examined the survivors. And sure enough, in the most southerly populations, those most strongly affected by the cold snap, natural selection had occurred. Shane tells Scientific American all about it in this podcast. The nifty figure above comes from the University of Illinois’ press release.
We reported recently that knight anoles (Anolis equestris) have shown up in the T&C. Here’s more on the story from B Naqqi Manco, the Terrestrial Ecologist at the Department of Environment and Maritime Affairs, Turks and Caicos Islands Government:
Cuban knight anoles are currently known from two sites on Providenciales: Vicinity of Beaches Resort in The Bight and Amanyara Resort on Northwest Point. Both populations showed up after the importation of large trees for landscaping from Miami. The properties are both irrigated pretty heavily to keep the bigger trees going. The tree imports were brought in before the Department of Agriculture was fully operative, so unfortunately things got in at that time that probably shouldn’t have made it through.
I don’t have confirmation of the knight anoles breeding, but I know The Bight population has been spreading with individuals having been found on adjacent properties and in a nearby residential neighbourhood. I would be very surprised if they’re not breeding on either site. Unfortunately we don’t have the capacity to monitor them well but this is something we want to keep a closer eye on and it would make a worthwhile research project for a student or intern.
Thus far, they have not been reported from any other island or cay.
Dave Wake: the younger years
The paper, by Nancy Staub and Rachel Mueller and just out in Copeia, is a delightful biography of DBW, as he is referred to by his lab and many others. As for the anole bit, you’ll have to read it to find out.
We’ve previously reported on Anolis equestris introduced to the Bahamas and elsewhere, and brown anoles (A. sagrei) introduced to Turks and Caicos. Now the knight anole is in T&C and people are worried about the impact they may have.
Read all about it in the (almost) latest from the October 2016 issue of Herpetological Review.
Two years ago, McCranie and Kohler published The Anoles of Honduras: Systematics, Distribution, and Conservation(available on Amazon for under twenty bucks and downloadable for free on the Museum of Comparative Zoology website).
In turn, two mostly favorable reviews were published. However, one of the reviews, by Levi Gray, did question whether a number of anole species recognized from small distributions in Honduras should be recognized as valid species, rather than just as populations of species that are widespread throughout Central America.
Writing in Zootaxa, Randy McCranie has now responded to this point, forcefully arguing that the species should be recognized and challenging his critics to present their own data if they feel otherwise. You’ll have to read Gray’s review and McCranie’s rebuttal yourself to decide what you think. Gray made his skepticism clear, he also did clearly call for more research to address the question.
These pages have previously told the tale of Anolis lineatus, the species whose dewlap is different on one side compared to the other. Now the work has been published in Breviora. Like all publications of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the paper can be downloaded from the museum’s publications webpage.
The research project was actually explained in a delightful video put together by the three joint first authors, all of whom are headed to college this fall.
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