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.
Well, the election is finally over, and the electoral results are awash with the color blue. More than 300 votes were cast in the semi-finals round, and then an all-star panel chose our winners from the top 12 in the popular vote. Perhaps surprisingly (perhaps not), the hoi polloi and the experts identified the same top three photos.
So now, with no further ado, the winner of the 2012 Anole Photo Contest is…
Another entry into the ever-expanding genre of anole literature. Check out snippets of the book. Amazon.com describes the book thusly: “From the moment of his hatching, in a flowerpot high above the ground, Oliver Anole saw the world as a game and an adventure. His spirit of play and love of creating spreads through the anole world, as just by being himself, he is able to inspire others to be inventive and create the lives they enjoy. I wrote Oliver the Overachiever to encourage children to celebrate their individuality and sense of community. I wanted to illustrate, through story and pictures, that a small person can create great effects that can change his world for the better.” And as for the author, “Karin Mesa has worked for the past nineteen years as a designer of decorative glass. She lives on the west coast of Florida with her husband, glass artist, Julian Mesa. Their studio, located in a one acre garden, provides the inspiration of nature that Karin has always used for her illustrations. Throughout her life observing nature has been fuel for Karin s imagination. Jagged tree stumps in a snowy winter became elven castles. Tree frogs nestled among orchid roots whisper of their cozy hidden homes throughout a garden world. Small lives, out of sight to many, are brought to life in water color and pencil. Karin s stories about these small creatures can be applied to their own lives by children, in ways that are real to them as individuals. Karin has stated her purpose in writing and illustrating like this: I hope that in a light and playful way my stories and pictures will encourage children to develop their creativity and sense of adventure. I want them to know the power they have to change things for the better.”
Manuel Leal’s fascinating studies showing that anoles have more going on than anyone would have expected is featured in a new Canadian TV documentary. The Nature of Things is a well known series hosted by the inimitable David Suzuki. This episode on the cognitive abilities is wide-ranging and has all the usual suspects (chimps, crows, etc.)…and anoles! Not to mention Manuel Leal. Unfortunately, the series can only be accessed online if you’re in Canada, but the rest of us can see a snippet on the post on Chipojolab, as well as a “behind-the-scenes” discussion of the film crew’s visit to Leal’s lab.
Filming in the Leal lab. From chipojolab post.
Variation in the hand morphology of lizar
ds. The drawings to the right of each foot indicate the arrangement of the tendons. Note that in B (anoles and Polychrus) and C (geckos), the tendons are independent, whereas in the others, they fused into tendenous plates in the palm of the hand.
In a paper in Acta Zoologica, Tulli et al. examine the tendons of the hands of a variety of lizards, including a dozen anole species. Their hypothesis is that differences in tendon struct should reflect ecological adaptation: in arboreal species, the tendons running to each finger (digit) should be independent, allowing great flexibility, whereas in more terrestrial lizards, the tendons should be fused, presumably providing great stability during locomotion at the cost of less agility.
The data show great variation in tendon morphology, with much of the variation falling out along phylogenetic lines. Form B in the figure above corresponds to all anoles and Polychrus. The data provide a suggestion that the authors’ hypothesis is correct, but statistical analyses incorporating phylogenetic information–affected by the similarity of closely-related species–fail to confirm the result.
Marıa J. Tulli, Anthony Herrel, Bieke Vanhooydonck and Virginia Abdala (2012). Is phylogeny driving tendon length in lizards? Acta Zoologica, 93, 319-329 DOI: 10.1111/j.1463-6395.2011.00505.x
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38KHc6j2-wI&feature=plcp
Hard to come to any other conclusion after observing this video clip of the Big Kahuna shot by John Rahn, right after the brown anole (BK to his friends) ate an ant, and then the spittle flew. Notice, too, the translucent, glowing tail where the sun strikes it–nice effect!
It’s Halloween, so we thought we’d celebrate by putting up a scary anole image. You’d think the internet would be full of photos of spooky anoles, anoles in scary outfits, devil anoles, anole hobgoblins, etc., but you’d be mistaken. In fact, we could only find two appropriate images, and one of them (above) is from last year’s Halloween issue of AA (but still worth a read a year later). The other is a picture of an anole on a jack-o-lantern in Hawaii on flickr; respecting the copyright restriction, we will not reproduce the photo, but you can go check it out yourself.
Today’s important for another reason: it’s the last day of voting for the 2013 Anole Photo contest. If you haven’t already (or if you can trick the system into allowing you to vote again), vote now!
We’ve had a lot of discussion on AA about invasive anoles. Although some in Hawaii seem hot and bothered about them, only in two places–both in Asia–are governmental entities actually trying to do something about it. And, unfortunately, both such efforts seem to be having a devastating effect on the native fauna. Gerrut Norval has reported on such efforts in Taiwan and how they are leading to the massacre of many native agamid lizards. Now, thanks to sharp-eyed AA reader, anole researcher and—as a fallback career option–ichthyologist, Bruce Collette, we learn of anole control efforts on the Japanese island of Okinawajima.
The current issue of Biological Magazine of Okinawa has just published a paper by Ishikawa et al. on efforts to control introduced A. carolinensis by trapping them in glue traps. Unfortunately, as they note, this trapping has succeeded in capturing–and presumably killing–many times more native geckos than green anoles. The journal is in Japanese and if any of our Japanese readers could provide a synopsis, we’d be very appreciative. However, the abstract is in English and is appended below, along with a photo from the paper of sticky-trapped anoles.
from fpczoner on Instagram: http://instagram.com/p/RTRKOfpDAs/
This lovely photo of A. capito taken by Gabe Gartner is one of the contestants in this year’s contest.
As we enter the last weekend, it’s neck-and-neck, with recent polls showing the race tightening. 500 votes are in–cast yours for the Anole Photo Contest. Voting ends at the witching hour on Halloween (October 31).
AA veterans will recall that we have a recurring interest in hurricanes, especially those that go over Marsh Harbour, Great Abaco, Bahamas, the site of a series of long-running anole experiments. Previous posts have documented how such hurricanes have prematurely terminated several experiments, and some may recall that last year, Hurricane Irene passed right over the islands. Miraculously, the hurricane hit at low tide and in just the right direction such that waves did not wash over many of the islands, and thus the experiment was not destroyed.
But this time, it doesn’t look so good. According to the latest projections, it looks like Sandy’s eye is going to pass pretty close, about 20 miles east of Marsh Harbour, at about 8 AM tomorrow morning eastern time. Barometer Bob is calling for winds up to 70 mph in the Abacos. And that’s just after high tide, and it is a particularly high high tide. Passing to the east would produce less storm surge than coming straight on from south, but it still sounds like bad news. Hang in there, little lizards, and good luck to all the denizens–human, saurian, and other–of the Bahamas.
Friday morning update: it’s right over Abaco:
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