Author: Jonathan Losos Page 3 of 130

Cannibalism is widely known to occur in anoles (also here). We can now add the Central American Anolis limifrons to the list.

photo from https://www.drmartinwilliams.com/lasthunt-html/

We are saddened to note the passing of Skip Lazell, who made seminal contributions to the understanding of anole diversity, biogeography and many other topics. We will especially miss his regular commentary, always in a very supportive way, on many Anole Annal posts.

According to Numi Mitchell at the Conservation Agency, “Skip died on Friday, 30 June 2023. He had Parkinson’s and died quietly of pneumonia after many happy years of retirement and tender care from Wenhua Lu, his wife.  There will likely be a memorial service at some point, but nothing is planned at the moment.”

I was recently reminded of the paper by Estrada and Silva Rodriguez on the ecological morphology of Cuban anoles. It was one of the first papers to quantitatively examine differences in morphology among a large and ecomorphologically diverse set of species. It was published in Ciencias Biológicas which can be hard to access, probably accounting for the fact that it hasn’t received the attention it deserves.

The picture and caption say it all. Read the paper by Felipe Espinoza De Janon and Mario Yánez-Muñoz.

Some cool canopy-dwelling anoles.

So little is known about what anoles do high above the ground that information from tree climbing censuses is always welcome. Thomas et al. report on their observations of several anoles tens of meters off the ground in the Chocó region of northwestern Ecuador. 

MCZ 36138, the holotype of Anolis roosevelti. Laszlo Meszoly, del. From Mayer and Gamble 2019.

We recently reported on the new U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service review of the status of A. roosevelti (spoiler alert: not good). And we mentioned that we’ve had a lot of posts on this species before, including a number of recountings of previous attempts to find the elusive beast. In turn, this post prompted Ray Huey to recount his own efforts. Here goes:

During my first summer at Harvard (1971), I joined Ernest Williams (my advisor) and two grad students (Preston Webster, Joan Roughgarden) on a trip to the Caribbean. This was my first introduction to the amazing Anolis lizards. We went to the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe (magnificent), Puerto Rico, and then Culebra–discovered by Columbus–off the east coast of Puerto Rico.

In 1939, the U.S. Navy started using Culebra as a target for bombing practice. But is also the island where Anolis roosevelti, a “giant” anole”–was found, but last seen in 1931. Williams thought we should try to find the beast, even though it had probably been blown to extinction.

We arrived at the tiny town of Culebra Pueblo in late afternoon. The only hotel was full, but we found a small rental house run by Frank Slaughter. Frank was colorful.  He had been a boat captain and had ferried Richard Levins and Harold Heatwole around while they were doing biological surveys on small islands near Puerto Rico.

Slaughter had a way with words. He referred to Levins as a “strange duck”: “When I was in high school, people were counting the number of hairs on the asshole of fruit flies. And here was Richard Levins, a grown man, still counting the number of hairs on asshole of fruit flies.”

Given that Levins was one of the premier evolutionary theorists of his era, we all howled.

Back to the business of looking for Anolis roosevelti. Williams asked Slaughter whether he’d seen any big green lizards on Culebra. Slaughter replied, “How big is big? Do you have to reach up to milk it?” Williams (who was usually formal, especially with strangers) was speechless. The rest of us had to work to keep from laughing. All things are relative, but some are more relative than others.

You can access the report here.

Previous Anole Annals posts on A. roosevelti–some guaranteed interesting!–can be found here.

English translation now available!

Robert Hoogveld writes:

This year the Dutch society for Herpetology “Lacerta” celebrates its 80th anniversary. To celebrate, a lot of hard work has been done over the past year on a special edition of our journal, Lacerta, entirely aimed at anoles. We call it the Anolis special. It has become a 256-page book with contributions from Anolis enthusiasts and connoisseurs from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Finland and Canada. It contains articles about, among other things, the study of anoles, behavior and welfare, travel reports with herpetological observations and species descriptions including the experiences of keeping in captivity.

At the moment the book can be ordered for anyone interested.  website: https://nvht-lacerta.nl/.On that website, everybody can order a copy for €20, including shipping world wide.

Dorothy Patent, an author who specializes in writing books for young readers about science and nature, has turned her attention to our favorite lizards. Lavishly illustrated with beautiful photos by the Day’s Edge team of Nate Dappen and Neil Losin, the book is a fabulous introduction to studying  evolution as it occurs.

Scientists featured will be familiar to AA readers: Shane Campbell-Staton, Jason Kolbe, Rob Pringle, James Stroud, Kristin Winchell and me.

A perfect stocking stuffer for kids of all ages (though 8-12 years old (3rd – 7th grade) is the target audience!

Here’s the description from Amazon:

In this groundbreaking, exceptionally researched installment of the award-winning Scientists in the Field series, discover how lizards rapidly adapt to life in the Caribbean islands, allowing scientists to study Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection in real time. 

Award-winning author Dorothy Hinshaw Patent joins forces with scientists/filmmakers Neil Losin and Nate Dappen, whose work is detailed in the Smithsonian Channel documentary “Laws of the Lizard,” to explore how the small but mighty lizards we call “anoles” are used by scientists to study basic principles of evolution and ecology.

Travel with the team to Florida and the Caribbean as they research how anoles followed similar but independent evolutionary paths on the four major islands of the Greater Antilles (Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Cuba). So while anoles on different islands may look like close relatives, they often are not! This is Darwin’s principle of natural selection at work.

And it makes anoles the perfect subjects for experiments that study how animals adapt to new challenges—such as climate change—in this exciting and timely addition to a celebrated series.

Robert Hoogveld writes:

This year the Dutch society for Herpetology “Lacerta” celebrates its 80th anniversary. To celebrate, a lot of hard work has been done over the past year on a special edition of our journal, Lacerta, entirely aimed at anoles. We call it the Anolis special. It has become a 256-page book with contributions from Anolis enthusiasts and connoisseurs from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Finland and Canada. It contains articles about, among other things, the study of anoles, behavior and welfare, travel reports with herpetological observations and species descriptions including the experiences of keeping in captivity. Although it is written in Dutch, I still think it is worth bringing this to your attention.

At the moment the book can be ordered for anyone interested. In 2023, every article will be translated into English and it will be made available on the Lacerta website: https://nvht-lacerta.nl/.On that website, everybody can order a copy for €20, including shipping world wide.