On a recent trip to Toronto, eminent bee-man and pollination biologist James Thomson showed me his lab, including a cage used for bee pollination studies. The cardboard box is a “box of bees” that can be bought commercially and the experiment involves training bees to go to containers with different colors. Despite being fascinated by the research, my mind couldn’t help but wandering to thinking about how useful such a contraption could be to set up in the field for ecological or behavioral anole studies. As you can see, the cage is big enough that it could house a number of anoles at natural densities, and the mesh lets sunlight and rain through. James kindly informed me that the cages can be purchased at Bioquip; the largest they stock is 6′ (h) x 6′ (w) x 12′ (l), but James told me that larger models can be custom-ordered, and that they are very hardy in the field. Someone should try this!
Author: Jonathan Losos Page 79 of 130
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.
Time for everyone’s favorite parlor game. Your AA correspondents are out in the field, and this turned up. So, which is it? And what species, exactly?
Based on a long-standing program of field exploration initiated by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the University of Guyana, with further support from the American Museum of Natural History and the Royal Ontario Museum, a distinguished cast of authors, each with extensive experience in Guyana, has just published this enormous and useful monograph. Part of the abstract is appended below, but more importantly you may be wondering, just which anoles occur in Guyana? The answer is that there are at least five native species (auratus, fuscoauratus, ortonii, planiceps, and punctatus). They note, as well, that chrysolepis is reported to occur in Guyana as well, but all chrysolepis group specimens they examined turned out to be planiceps.
In addition, at least one Lesser Antillean species occurs in the cities of Georgetown and Kartabo. These invaders have been identified as both A. extremus from Barbados or A. aeneus from Grenada and the Grenadines, but the authors were unable to find any reliable morphological characters that could distinguish the two species, and thus could come to no conclusion about which species, or both, occur in several cities in Guyana, though they did note that Ernest Williams had identified many of the specimens in museums from Guyana as A. aeneus, as good a reason as any to attribute them to that species. The authors conclude “Clearly, the taxonomic status of Anolis aeneus versus Anolis extremus needs further investigation, both in areas where they occur in the West Indies and where they have been introduced on islands and the mainland of South America.”
Honorary anole friend Polychrus marmoratus also occurs in Guyana and is pictured above.
The first half of the two-page abstract:
Anolis cristatellus moving in on St. Martin. Photo by Mark Yokoyama
Mark Yokoyama has just published a review of the introduced reptiles and amphibians of St. Martin, where he lives, and there are a lot of them, including several anoles. Anolis cristatellus has apparently just arrived at some resorts and may be spreading, and A. sagrei has been there for a while. We recently discussed another article in the same issue of IRCF Reptiles & Amphibians, which reported that A. sagrei is now in the Turks and Caicos and may be interacting with a A. scriptus, a close relative of A. cristatellus. If A. sagrei and A. cristatellus become well-established on St. Martin, it will be interesting to see what happens when they come into contact. Of course, more importantly is how they will interact with the native species, A. gingivinus, which is ecologically moderately similar to these two trunk-ground anoles, and A. pogus, which is small and potentially a prey item, especially for the more robust A. cristatellus.
Yokoyama also notes of an apparently short-lived invasion of A. bimaculatus in the 90’s and an enigmatic single specimen of A. marmoratus collected a half century ago.
Anolis sagrei certainly gets around, and it’s added another locality to its ever-expanding range: the Turks and Caicos. AA contributor Joe Burgess recently published a paper in the most recent edition of IRCF Reptiles & Amphibians documenting its occurrence on the island. As we’ve come to expect, the population is quite numerous and–ominously–the native A. scriptus–itself also a trunk-ground anole–was not very common at the site. Anolis scriptus is a close relative of the Puerto Rican A. cristatellus and we’ve reported previously on these two species battling it out in Miami and Costa Rica. Stay tuned.
Good news and bad news from the good folks at CBS today. Those of you who are Sunday morning TV junkies will know that one of the pearls of the morning is the nature segment–combining beautiful imagery and sound–that comes near the end of the CBS Sunday Morning show. And what was featured this morning? Brown anoles from Tampa, males displaying, females looking regal in their diamondbacks–it was the best Sunday morning nature segment ever…except that the anoles were referred to as geckos!!! Doh! I wonder how long it will take CBS to right this injustice? You can watch the segment at this link, but you have to watch a commercial first. If anyone sees this pop up on Youtube, please let us know and we’ll link straight to it.
Update: See the nice note from the producer at CBS below. Unfortunately, they appear to have taken down the segment from their website.
Photo by Alan Templeton.
Couldn’t resist including this
Last June, we had a discussion of tail regeneration (that was continued just last week), as part of which I stated that three-tailedness is known in lizards. And sure enough, here’s an example of it, albeit an agamid (at least it starts with “a”). Alan Templeton, of fruit fly and collared lizard fame, is the photographer, and the shot was taken in Kiryat Yam in northern Israel, close to the Mediterranean.
Species, anyone? And, if I’m not mistaken, agamids don’t have tail fracture planes, which explains the lousy looking regenerated tails. But why the triple? Anyone got a photo of an anole doing that? A quick Google failed to find any, but did come up with this.
Anolis sagrei in All-America Park in South Miami. Photo by Janson Jones.
Last month, we had a trio of papers [1,2,3] on the awesome anolifauna of a tiny park in Miami, which currently hosts five anoles, four introduced from Cuba, Hispaniola and Jamaica, and with a fifth, from Puerto Rico, only blocks a way. Now Janson Jones has joined the chorus, adding his observations from a visit in 2011. Check out his fascinating observations on A. sagrei and the gang on dust tracks on the web.
Photo by Karen Cusick.
They say redheads have more fun, but is that true in the brown anole world? We’ve had a lot of discussion of A. sagrei that are overall orangey in color, but less about the coppertop look that seems to pop up in populations far and wide. We certainly see it on some of small Bahamian islands, but not others. The photo above is from Florida, courtesy of Karen Cusick’s Daffodil’s Photo Blog. Who else has seen the redheads, and where? And any idea of their significance?
It’s that time again, time to invite/implore AA readers to contribute posts. All are welcome. Have any interesting questions about anole biology, cool photos? Want to comment on a recent (or not-so-recent) paper of interest? Or tell us about your research plans or results? Anole Annals is a forum for all of these, and anything else anole-related. And now’s a particularly good time, as your trusted correspondent is leaving the country for several weeks. Fear not, there will be reports from the field, but it’s a good time for contributions from any and all! If you’ve never posted before, it’s easy, and instructions can be found here or contact the AA Editorial Offices at anoleannals@gmail.com.