Here at AA, we love lizards with horns on the tip of their snouts. The horned anole, Anolis proboscis, is of course our favorite, but there are others. For example, Sri Lanka is home to the little known Ceratophora stoddardi. Anima Mundi, an online magazine produced by an Italian husband-and-wife team, just had a nice seven page spread on this species, which it dubs the “rhino lizard,” replete with beautiful photos and a bit of natural history information. Like the horned anole, the rhino lizard can move its horn! I wonder what would happen if they ever met. Who knows? But if you want to learn more about the rhino lizard, check out our previous post on the species.
Author: Jonathan Losos Page 23 of 129
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.
Two years ago, the Museum of Comparative Zoology published Randy McCranie’s book on the anoles of Honduras. Now, the MCZ is soon to publish Randy’s latest work, a massive compilation on the lizards, crocs and turtles of Honduras, to be titled, appropriately enough, The Lizards, Crocodiles, and Turtles of Honduras: Systematics, Distribution, and Conservation.
How would you like your photograph to grace the front or back of this forthcoming volume? We’re looking for beautiful photos of Honduran lizards, crocs or turtles. The front cover photo must be vertical in aspect, the back cover horizontal. We can’t offer to pay you, but we’d be happy to provide you with a copy of the volume when it appears.
Please send photos to anoleannals@gmail.com
Thanks!
Colin Donihue and Anthony Herrel just completed their trip to Redonda to study Anolis nubilus and no doubt they’ll report back to us shortly. Meanwhile, a tip of the hat to AA commenter Nathan Manwaring for pointing out this article posted on Fauna and Flora International’s website:
Captivating Caribbean island to be given a new lease of life
Starving goats and predatory rats to be removed from Redonda to restore this Caribbean island to its former glory.
The Government of Antigua and Barbuda has announced plans to remove goats and invasive rats from its most rugged and remote offshore island to allow endangered wildlife and their habitats to recover.
Redonda is home to a unique array of plants and animals, including rare lizards found nowhere else in the world. The uninhabited and seldom visited island is also formally recognised as an Important Bird Area, supporting globally-significant numbers of seabirds.
However, the island’s plant and animal populations are disappearing fast thanks in large part to its population of over 5,000 aggressive black rats (an invasive alien species) which prey heavily on the island’s wildlife. Together with the herd of long-horned goats that was brought to Redonda by humans more than a century ago, these mammals have transformed this once-forested island into a moonscape. So few plants survive that even the goats now face starvation.
Redonda is over 50 hectares in area and rises dramatically from the Caribbean Sea, 56 km south-west of Antigua. Goat skeletons litter the island, along with the relics of stone buildings from a guano mining community that lived here until the First World War. With few trees left to stabilise the ground, soil and rocks are crumbling into the sea, threatening nearshore coral reef in the waters below.
“We cannot stand by and watch as a part of our country, part of our history, disappears. We cannot be responsible for decimating animal populations on a regional scale,” says local conservationist Natalya Lawrence of the Environmental Awareness Group (EAG).
The Redonda Restoration Programme has been formed by the Antigua & Barbuda Government and EAG in collaboration with partners from the UK (Fauna & Flora International, British Mountaineering Council), USA (Island Conservation) and New Zealand (Wildlife Management International Ltd).
“I am immensely proud that my ministry has been a driving force in the development of this major initiative,” says Honourable Molwyn Joseph, Minister of Health and the Environment. “Restoring Redonda to its full glory will be a great achievement for our country.”
A new home for starving goats
One of the first steps will be to capture and move the remaining goats to Antigua, where they will be cared for by the Department of Agriculture.
“The goats are starving to death on Redonda and must be removed for their own sake,” explains Astley Joseph, Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture. “We believe it is important to rescue this rare breed because it could have useful drought-adapted genes that would benefit other herds on Antigua and elsewhere.”
Rats will then be eradicated using a rodenticide bait that has previously been used to restore more than 20 other Caribbean islands without harming native wildlife. This is scheduled to be completed by mid-2017.
“We and other international organisations have offered our support because we recognise that this is a very challenging yet globally important initiative” says Sophia Steele, Eastern Caribbean Project Coordinator at Fauna & Flora International. “Recent studies have identified Redonda as the most important island to restore in the Eastern Caribbean due to its Critically Endangered wildlife and the high probability of lasting success.”
The new programme is funded by the UK Government’s Darwin Initiative, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the Taurus Foundation and private sponsors. Additional technical and in-kind support is being provided by Caribbean Helicopters and Syngenta Crop Protection AG.
Dr Helena Jeffery Brown of the Department of the Environment says, “Antiguans and Barbudans will be proud as Redonda becomes a role model for regional biodiversity conservation. This will be yet another example of how this country is proactive in meeting the national and international commitments it has made to conserve biodiversity.”
Antigua and Barbuda has a wealth of experience and success under the ongoing Offshore Islands Conservation Programme which has, since 1995, removed rats and other invasive pests from 15 islets closer to Antigua in the North East Marine Management Area. This has saved the Antiguan racer – once the world’s rarest known snake – from extinction, and enabled an incredible recovery of other native animals and plants. Many tens of thousands of residents and tourists now visit and enjoy Antigua’s pest-free islands every year.
“I am most excited to see the progression of recovery on Redonda once the threat of invasive species is removed,” says local biologist Andrea Otto, who will be part of the research team documenting the recovery process. “I want to see which types of vegetation spring up first and which birds return. From what we have seen on the smaller islands we have restored, the transformation will be incredible.”
For more information, read the press release.
Please support this important work by donating today.
Celebrate Daylight’s Savings time with 40% off the Ecomorph line of watches on Zazzle.com. Sale Code: DAYLIGHTDEAL
And we’re open to suggestions for new species to feature on a lovely wrist fob. Suggest away!
What a lovely festive (a.k.a., brown) anole!
For more on the new AMNH exhibit on Cuba, see our previous report.
h/t to Sandra Buckner for notifying us of this magazine cover.
It’s been a while since we updated this montage…and at least a few months since the last anole cover. Get to work, everyone! And let me know if we’ve missed any.
Peter Uetz of the Reptile Database fame sends the following Valentine’s Day greetings:
If you or your significant other loves anoles, you may want to show her/him this hearty Anolis distichus (Figure 2960, above) on occasion of today’s Valentine’s Day. It clearly shows a heart on it’s head. Some other specimens such as the couple in Figure 3297 (right, from locality 1 in the Google map), also show a heart although it’s not as pronounced. Also note their blunt coloration which doesn’t seem to affect their affection.
Anolis distichus is pretty variable and even within this subspecies, A. d. dominicensis Reinhardt & Lütken 1863, to which all these specimen belong, there is considerable variation. By the way, the guy with the heart (Figure 2960) is from the same locality 3 as two other specimens which do not have a heart (Figures 2948 and 2968) although they display a similar shape on their heads. Figure 3087 shows yet another specimen for comparison, this time from locality 2.
Various authors have described a dozen subspecies from Hispaniola (reviewed in Schwartz 1971, see map 2 from that paper). The northern half of Hispaniola is almost entirely in the hands of A. d. dominicensis, hence the specimens on the photos have been assigned to that subspecies.
Note that Glor & Laport 2012 elevated several Dominican subspecies of A. distichus to full species level, namely A. dominicensis, A. favillarum, A. ignigularis, A. properus, and A. ravitergum. The Reptile Database hasn’t followed this yet because their geographic sampling was limited to relatively few localities and they did not provide any updated diagnoses (but their recommendations have been recorded in the database). Also, there seems to be hybridization among several of these populations.
Photo localities:
2948: 3
2960: 3
2968: 3
3087: 2
3297: 1
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Miguel Landestoy and Luke Mahler who helped with the IDs.
References
Glor, Richard E.; Robert G. Laport 2012. Are subspecies of Anolis lizards that differ in dewlap color and pattern also genetically distinct? A mitochondrial analysis. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 64 (2): 255-260. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790310004276
Schwartz, A. 1968. Geographic variation in Anolis distichus Cope (Lacertilia, Iguanidae) in the Bahama Islands and Hispaniola. Bull. Mus. comp. Zool. Harvard 137 (2): 255- 309. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4784182
Schwartz, A. 1971. Anolis distichus. Catalogue of American Amphibians and Reptiles (108)
(used to be available online at ZenScientist, and maybe soon at the SSAR website again).
Anolis distichus in the Reptile Database
http://reptile-database.reptarium.cz//species?genus=Anolis&species=distichus
(an extended synonymy and distribution section will appear in the next database release)
The database entry also has another 43 references most of which are available online.
Any congress advertising with a horned anole (Anolis proboscis) must be worth attending. Check out the details at the conference website.
A new paper in Zootaxa aims to figure it out, based on the travel journals of its describer, Franz Werner. Here’s the paper’s abstract:
The eminent Austrian zoologist Franz Werner described several new species of amphibians and reptiles from America, including Anolis aequatorialis Werner, 1894 and Hylodes appendiculatus Werner, 1894. Both species were described based on single specimens, with no more specific type localities than “Ecuador” (Werner 1894a,b). After its description, A. aequatorialis remained unreported until Peters (1967) and Fitch et al. (1976) published information on its distribution and natural history. Anolis aequatorialis is currently known to inhabit low montane and cloud forest on the western slopes of the Andes from extreme southern Colombia to central Ecuador, between 1300 and 2300 m elevation (Ayala-Varela & Velasco 2010; Ayala-Varela et al. 2014; Lynch et al. 2014; D.F. Cisneros-Heredia pers. obs.). Likewise, Hylodes appendiculatus (now Pristimantis appendiculatus) remained only known from its type description until Lynch (1971) and Miyata (1980) provided certain localities and information on its natural history. Pristimantis appendiculatus is currently known to occur in low montane, cloud, and high montane forests on the western slopes of the Andes from extreme southern Colombia to northern Ecuador between 1460 and 2800 m elevation (Lynch 1971; Miyata 1980; Lynch & Burrowes 1990; Lynch & Duellman 1997; Frost 2016). To this date, the type localities of both species remain obscure. The purpose of this paper is to restrict the type localities of Hylodes appendiculatus Werner, 1894 and Anolis aequatorialis Werner, 1894 based on analyses of the travel journals of their original collector.