Note: the watch on the bottom right is not one of ours!

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.

2968

2948

3087

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.

Day’s Edge Productions has produced a great new video about how two species with seemingly identical dewlaps manage to coexist. Manuel Leal explains what’s really going on.

This video originally appeared in bioGraphic, an online magazine from the California Academy of Sciences that features beautiful and surprising stories about nature and sustainability. 

What is bioGraphic, you ask? Here’s what it’s webpage says:

A multimedia magazine powered by the California Academy of Sciences, bioGraphic was created to showcase both the wonder of nature and the most promising approaches to sustaining life on Earth. We hope our stories will spark conversations, shift perspectives, and inspire new ideas, helping not only to shed new light on our planet’s most pressing environmental challenges, but also—ultimately—to solve them.

Through an ever-evolving array of storytelling tools and techniques, we will introduce you to some of the world’s most intriguing creatures and inspiring people. We’ll also transport you to faraway places, enabling you to experience what it’s like to be there and what’s at stake for those involved. Along the way, we’ll take a critical look at the environmental issues that pose the greatest threats to our future—and the most promising ideas for addressing them.

So please come along—and come back often—as we travel the globe in search of stories that inspire both awe and hope for a more sustainable future.

Kristin Winchell talks about her studies on urban anole evolution on an interview on PRI.

I’ve recently learned that famous nature micro-photographer Piotr Naskrecki observed an aquatic anole catching prey underwater. Here’s what he had to say on his blog, The Smaller Majority:

The other aquatic iguana