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Author: Jonathan Losos Page 25 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.
Karen Cusick, proprietor of Daffodil’s Photo Blog, watched this green anole turn from green to brown. Or mostly brown. I’ve seen this sometimes myself. Anyone know what’s going on here? Seen it in other green anoles?
A newborn anole arrives in November. Photo by Karen Cusick
Who says global warming is such a bad thing? Ok, it is, but at least there are some benefits, especially if you’re a brown anole in Florida. Read all about it in Daffodil’s Photo Blog.
The American Museum of Natural History just opened an exhibit on anoles that also presents information on the natural history and culture of Cuba. Or maybe it’s the other way around. But either way, you have to love their logo. The New York Times just reviewed the exhibit, and not surprisingly, anoles were a centerpiece of the article.
And here’s some text from the article:
From the recent ISBE Newsletter (28:2, p.26).
The artist, Ken Otter, who when not drawing is a professor at the University of Northern British Columbia, explains the back-story:
My first love was reptiles – birds came as a later incarnation (although I console myself that they are simply feathered reptiles). I was actually planning on shifting to working on anoles during my postdoc. I have had numerous ones as pets over the years – my students gave me a brown anole that became our lab mascot for about 5 years. I even had an undergrad student at the University of Nottingham that I was co-supervising with Pete McGregor run trials to see if males eavesdrop on dewlap displays of other males. Unfortunately, the student was primarily focused on nature photography, and we had a miscommunication on scientific design. I found out after the fact that he hadn’t quite followed protocol, so we couldn’t count all our trials, so the results were only ever presented in a conference poster and not published. He ended up as a photographer for BBC Wildlife though!
I had actually been awarded a short-term postdoc back in the 90s from the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour to test anole signalling behaviour using video playback systems (very similar to the stuff that has since been done using Robo-lizards). Unfortunately, it came at the same time as I was offered a tenure track job here, and the University had a ‘northern research focus’ so wasn’t too keen on me heading off to the Caribbean to do field work. Guess now that I have full professorship I could always tell them to stuff themselves, but I have my research program set up now! Still find dewlap displaying fascinating, especially with the added component of UV signalling in the mix. That aspect parallels a lot of the stuff with bird signalling. The fact that males are in such close proximity and can see at least silhouettes of others displaying give a certain network component that Pete and I were always interested in pursuing, but just never go around to it. Still occupies my thoughts (hence the cartoons) and talk about it in my lectures, but guess I will have to wait to put it into field practice! Still, next North American Ornithological Congress in 2020 is being held in Puerto Rico….
And here’s another of his drawings:
Earlier this year, we reported that researchers had split the four species of green anoles on Hispaniolia, describing 12 new species. Wasting no time–and with much beauty–the Dominican Republic has placed four of these new species on stamps! Thanks to the world’s authority on anoles on stamps, Uwe Bartelt, for bringing this to our attention.
It’s that twice in the year opportunity to get AA anole watches at bargain basement prices in honor of today’s clock changes. Get ’em before they run out of stock (or, more importantly, before midnight). Use Code:
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Aslam Ibrahim Castellón Maure posted this photo on his Facebook page. Taken in the Zapata Peninsula, it’s a Cuban trogon eating an unidentified anole. The Cuban trogon, or tocoroco, is the national bird of Cuba. But what species of anole? Hispaniolan trogons have also been observed eating anoles. More surprisingly, their lovely relative the quetzal has also been reported to do so, notable because quetzals are thought to be primarily frugivorous.
It’s not clear whether Rick Shine would know an Anolis lizard if one hit him on the head, but there can be no doubt that he is a great scientist and herpetologist. Anole Annals is delighted to learn that tonight in Parliament House in Canberra, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will present Rick with the 2016 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science. Previous winners have been biomedical researchers, cell biologists and astronomers, among others. Read all about it here. Congratulations, Rick!