Author: Jonathan Losos Page 47 of 129

Mike Vallee, a dive instructor on Little Cayman, spends his spare time watching that island’s delightfully long-schnozzed anole. What a great hobby! He says the “anoles are often found in and around the local agave plant. They are the perfect color match and their spiked leaves provide protection from birds and other predators.” He also commented on the photo above, in reference to a previous post on the long snout of this species, that we now know one thing they do with their pointy front end.

Here’s some more lovely pics he took.

Photo by Mike Vallee

Photo by Mike Vallee

Photo by Mike Vallee

Photo by Mike Vallee

Anolis cuvieri. Photo by Alejandro Sanchez.

Photo by Alejandro Sanchez.

Father Alejandro Sanchez has done it again! Previously, he posted some wonderful photos of Anolis cuvieri moving around, now he’s caught them in flagrante delicto. Here’s the backstory: “The pics were taken around 10:30 AM. The lizards were about 10 meters above ground. I cannot take credit for the initial sighting. The group of students of UPR-Humacao saw the male jump to the tree where the female was and almost immediately copulation started. In all it lasted about 15 minutes. The separation was very abrupt (possibly caused by the group of people under the tree, taking pictures). At that point the male jumped to another branch and ran down low enough for me to be able to shake it down and capture it. At that time, the male still had his hemipenis everted.”

Capuchin monkey eating a basilisk. Photo by Andrew G.

Capuchin monkeys may look cute, but in reality they’re cold-blooded killers. A recent paper in Herpetology Notes reports on a golden-bellied capuchin (different species than the one pictured above and below) that ate a Polychrus marmoratus, an Anolis ortonii, and an Enyalius catenatus.

Monkey predation on anoles has been documented previously. This paper cites a case of a capuchin eating an A. cupreus, and primatologist Betsy Mitchell recorded one eating an anole–perhaps A. frenatus–in her thesis (which I don’t have in front of me). We also reported on another capuchin species eating a Polychrus in a previous post. A quick google found an undocumented report of rhesus macaques eating A. carolinensis in Florida. Anyone know of any other reports?

And, finally, for your delectation, a video of a capuchin eating an iguana:

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An iguanito. Photo from the Coastal Star.

A nice article in the Coastal Star just reported on the spread of knight anoles through Florida. The article contains numerous nuggets, such as quotes from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission stating that they’re worried about bigger things (e.g., pythons, tegus), that they’re locally called “iguanitos,” and that iguanas are rebounding from freeze-caused mortality in the recent past and are mainly a problem for pooping by people’s pools.

Championship round, lightweight division. Photo from Daffodil’s Photo Blog.

We periodically post pictures, videos and stories of male anoles duking it out with each other [e.g., 1,2], but over on Daffodil’s Photo Blog is evidence that such squabbling starts at a young age. Check out how the little fellas, with barely a dewlap to speak of, nonetheless behave just the same as their elders.

Last week, Yoel Stuart and colleagues (including me) published a paper demonstrating that green anoles had rapidly (ca. 20 years) evolved an increase in toepad size as a result of upward shifts in habitat use caused the presence of brown anoles.

The Discovery Institute, an organization devoted to the advocacy of creationist views, posted a blog yesterday saying, basically, “this is not news?” After summarizing the study, here’s what they have to say:

“….these scientists found that when a new species of lizards invaded another’s territory (in fact the new species was placed there intentionally by the researchers, meaning they weren’t quite studying “natural” selection), the old one sought higher ground. That seems like a smart thing to do. To go along with the new territory, they subsequently evolved “larger toepads (see here for a picture).

After reading this, what I really wanted to see was the precise sizes of the toepad and compare the changes. But alas that information is not in the paper. I tried downloading the supplemental materials but it’s not there either. So let’s assume that the toepad size changed a lot. What have we shown?

Not much. We’ve seen that the size of lizard feet can change in response to invaders’ driving a species to perch at higher levels in the trees. No new traits arose. Only the size of a pre-existing trait changed. Again, that’s interesting but such changes in the size of lizard feet do very little to explain the origin of lizards in the first place, even if these changes happen in just a few generations.

If we take seriously the statement from the authors that the modest results from this study can help test “evolutionary hypotheses about phenomena … on time scales too long for direct observation,” then that implies that over long periods you might be able to change the size of an organism or some of its body parts. Since when is that news?”

Not many anoles have blue dewlaps, so we were delighted to see Ann Stafford’s tweet of this lovely  conspersus from Grand Cayman strutting its stuff.

Anole eggs found in a tomato pot. Photo by Karen Cusick.

The egg-laying habits of anoles are surprisingly little known. On Daffodil’s Photo Blog, Karen Cusick recently reported on the discovery of eight–count ’em, eight!–anole eggs in a tomato plant pot. Readers, where else have you found anole eggs?

Also, whose eggs are these? Both green and brown’s occur in Karen’s backyard. In Anolis Newsletter V, Todd Vincent provided tips on how to tell them apart.

Brown and green anole eggs. Photo by Todd Vincent.

And for some delightful footage on baby anoles, let’s not forget this old post.

Anolis phyllorhinus. Photo by Bret Whitney

Anolis dissimilis. Photo by Paulo Melo Sampaio

In a fascinating new paper, Ivan Prates and colleagues report on a phylogenetic analysis of Amazonian Dactyloa clade anoles with implications for a number of important topics in anole evolution.

The authors generated new mitochondrial and nuclear gene data for many Amazonian Dactyloa and combined those data with existing data from previous studies. Of particular note was inclusion of Anolis dissimilis, until recently known from only a single locality, and the Amazonian horned anole, Anolis phyllorhinus.

The paper had four main results, which I’ll go through seriatim. First, the overall phylogeny is very much in accord with Castañeda and de Queiroz’s previous work. The biggest difference is that A. dissimilis occurs in a distinct clade with A. neblinus and A. calimae. A relationship between the latter two species had been suggested by the previous work; A. dissimilis had not been included in those studies. The three species have quite disjunct geographic distributions (Amazonia, western Colombia, and the tepuis of the Guiana Shield, so finding them to comprise a distinct clade is interesting.

Anolis punctatus. You can almost see a horn ready to burst forth from the tip of that snout. Photo by Arthur Georges.

Second, as the figure below illustrates, A. phyllorhinus, as expected, groups with A. punctatus, whereas A. proboscis groups with the phenacosaurs (heterodermus group; though A. proboscis is not actually included in the analysis because genetic samples were not available; however, recent studies clearly indicate that A. proboscis belongs with this clade). Prates et al. note that, other than the horn, A. phyllorhinus and A. punctatus are morphologically very similar. I’ll take that one step further–you can almost imagine the antecedents of the horn as a swelling on the tip of the snout of A. punctatus. And, in addition, note that the horns of the two-horned species are very different-looking. Although Williams placed them in the species group, he did note that they actually didn’t look at that much alike. We now know that he was correct in this observation–hornedness is a convergent trait in anoles (no, I’m not calling it horniness).

Third, Prates et al. calculated divergence times, calibrated with three fossils that can be confidently placed in iguanian phylogeny.

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