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.
New guy on bottom. Photos by Karen Cusick.
Daffodil’s Photo Blog reported a follow-up on Monday’s sagrei smackdown. Round 2 went on for at least 40 minutes yesterday–vicious, wide-ranging, and at times comical–and the young dude got his comeuppance! Serves him right.
Gardening glove takes a beating.
Photos by Karen Cusick
Over at Daffodil’s Photo Blog, Karen Cusick reports on an intense battle between two brown anoles. Where did this new champion come from? And how will he be stopped?
The king is dead (or at least chased off). Long live the king!
The Cover of Anolis Newsletter III, in which Ernest Williams revealed the POUM
Here at AA, we’ve often discussed Ernest Williams’ Principle of Unsympathetic Magic [1,2], which states that any hypothesis formulated in the field will immediately be disproven by the next observation. Janson Jones has recently uncovered its corollary, the Kakakairos of the Unprepared, which proclaims that whenever one goes into the field without a piece of equipment that one normally has, a situation will arise in which that equipment is needed. Or, more generally, whatever one is unprepaped for will happen. Janson explains it much better at Dust Tracks on the Web. All I can say is, it happens to me all the time.
Not the greatest photo of a brown anole you’ll ever see, but it’s got one thing others don’t: it’s on Beyonce’s Tumblr page! Under the “my work” category. One can only speculate on its significance.
Eminent herpetologist Laurie Vitt, recently retired from the University of Oklahoma (but active as ever), gave the Distinguished Herpetologist’s Lecture at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Herpetologists League, which was part of The World Congress of Herpetology 7. The talk, the basis of a just-published paper in Herpetologica, was a paean to the fundamental importance of natural history to modern science, using vignettes from Laurie’s career as excellent examples.
The article starts in a thought-provoking way:
“Darwin’s studies provide a prime example of the importance of natural-history studies to conceptual biology… [On his voyage on the Beagle], Darwin collected a massive amount of data on geology, zoology, and botany while on land; and after returning, publishing some classic monographs, and mulling over his observations, he assembled his classic volume “On the Origin of Species,” in which a massive amount of natural-history data combined with experimental studies on selective breeding were used to support his theory of evolution by natural selection.”
And the key take-home:
“At least five key elements contributed to Darwin’s ability to put together his compelling theory, which continues to be the unifying theme of modern biology: (1) five continuous years in the field collecting natural-history data, (2) funding with no apparent restrictions on what he could do, (3) no electronic distractions, (4) time to write and think after returning, and (5) much help, including funding for the classic Zoology series, edited by Darwin but published by various authors.”
Though not extensively autobiographical at a personal level, there are some vignettes:
This wasn’t mentioned in the article.
“I grew up with an interest in natural history, subjecting my parents to loose bats and garter snakes in the house, as well as rattlesnakes and later, Old World vipers including puff adders, Gaboon Vipers (Bitis gabonica), and Russell’s Vipers (Daboia russelii) in terraria in my bedroom (which in retrospect suggests that I was either ignorant of the potential effects of snakebite, or downright stupid!).”
And it concludes with an important, little appreciated message
A year ago, we reported on the project by lizard film-makers extraordinare Neil Losin and Nate Dappen, the Day’s Edge team, to produce a film and book on the beautiful lacertid lizards on the island of Ibiza. The book is about to be published and by all accounts is gorgeous. Here’s your chance to order it at a pre-publication discount. Now, if they’d only get back to their anoline roots and do the same for even prettier lizards!
K. Rs, after correctly identifying the eye in this morning’s post as belonging to A. fraseri, posed a question of his own: “Could someone please tell me what the anole in the picture is. The photo is from Cuatrok 77′s flickr page but there is no species identification.It looks to be from the equestris group and is probably a subspecies of Anolis noblei, equestris or luteogularis. I am seeking to upload the photo to Wikimedia Commons and any help in it’s identification would be greatly appreciated.
A pretty Dactyloa, Anolis chloris. Photo from the Reptile Database.
Two years ago, Castañeda and de Queiroz published a phylogeny of Dactyloa clade anoles based on molecular data for 40 species, approximately half of the clade. It was far and away the best phylogenetic work published on the clade and brought sense to a previously not well understood part of the anole world. The study revealed the existence of six geographically coherent clades and had important implications for our understanding of morphological evolution in this clade, which contains the mainland giants.
Name that Dactyloa. Photo from Pbertner’s photostream. See end of this post for a hint.
Recently, Castañeda and de Queiroz have published a follow up study in which they add morphological data for 60 species (the original 40 plus 20 more). The paper is published in the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology and, like all MCZ publications, is freely available for download (click on Breviora or BMCZ on the left hand of the page). We’ve already previously discussed one aspect of the paper, a note added in press critiquing the Nicholson et al. proposal to split Anolis into eight genera.
The main focus of the paper, however, is to ask whether adding morphology increases the resolution or changes the story of the phylogeny based on molecular data. And the answer is: no, it doesn’t. As found in previous studies, morphology on its own does not provide a coherent picture of anole relationships, nor does it seem to substantially change the results derived from the much more informative molecular data. However, morphology certainly has one advantage–it allows us to add in taxa for which no molecular data are available.
The paper’s abstract gives much more detail and, of course, you should check out the paper itself.
ABSTRACT. We present a phylogenetic analysis of the Dactyloa clade of Anolis lizards, based on morphological (66 characters of external morphology and osteology) and molecular (4,700 bases of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA) data. Our set of morphological characters includes some that exhibit continuous variation and others that exhibit polymorphism within species; we explored different coding methods for these classes of characters. We performed parsimony and Bayesian analyses on morphology-only and combined data sets. Additionally, we explicitly tested hypotheses of monophyly of: 1) Dactyloa including Phenacosaurus, 2) Dactyloa excluding Phenacosaurus (as traditionally circumscribed), 3) taxa previously ranked as series or species groups described based on morphological characters, and 4) clades inferred from molecular data. The morphological data alone did not yield Dactyloa or any of the previously recognized series described based on morphological characters; only the Phenacosaurus clade (as delimited based on molecular data) was inferred with the morphological data, and only in the parsimony analysis. In contrast, Dactyloa was inferred as monophyletic with the combined data set, although topology tests failed to reject the hypothesis of non-monophyly. Additionally, five clades inferred based on molecular data (eastern, latifrons, Phenacosaurus, roquet, and western) were inferred with the combined data sets with variable support and including additional species for which molecular data were not available and which have geographic distributions that conform to those of the clades in which they were included. Of the previously recognized taxa based on morphological characters, only the roquet series, which corresponds in species composition to the roquet clade, was inferred with the combined data. Topology tests with the combined data set rejected the monophyly of the aequatorialis, latifrons (as traditionally circumscribed), and punctatus series but not that of the tigrinus series and Phenacosaurus (as traditionally circumscribed). Our phylogenetic analyses and topology tests indicate that a new taxonomy for Dactyloa is warranted; we therefore present a revised taxonomy based on the results our phylogenetic analyses and employing phylogenetic definitions of taxon names.
Anolis carolinensis from Miami. Photo by J. Losos.
Think quick: how many states does A. carolinensis occur in naturally? And can you name them?
Editor’s Note: A report from the Sunshine State
I was asked to report on my most recent Anolis garmani exploits here in South Florida, So here goes. Remember, I’m not a scientist, or an author, just a funny old man with whiskers!
Thursday, June 27, 2013
An old friend had asked me to find him a few “Nice Green Anoles.” His intent, I believe, was to have me supply Anolis carolinensis for him to breed.
OOPS!!!
He received 1.2 young adult Anolis garmani!
My friend is handicapped & lives on a fixed income. He is also a very knowledgeable (& well known in certain circles) Herper. I thought he might enjoy these highly intelligent &, at times, PRECOCIOUS creatures!
SO!
I left work early, cuz I can do things like that! I know of several populations of Anolis garmani, from Southern Dade Co. to Northern Palm Beach Co., other than the colony at All-America Park. I decided to visit one in North Dade Co. ½ way between work & my friend’s house.
In the populations that I know of there are several types:
1) Green with a dark (½) tail & a red blotch on the top of the head
2) Green with powder blue ½ tail or more & blue bands. With or without the red blotch on head
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