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.
Freddie is my dog, a 27 lb mixed breed, and this photo was taken in my back yard. Freddie’s quite the little hunter – fascinated by cockroaches at night and Anolis sagrei by day. The latter have become extremely abundant here in Houston in the last decade or so, out-competing/displacing the native green anole. There are dozens (hundreds?) in my yard. They tend to stay on or near the ground, unlike the green anole, which seems to prefer (especially now) to be higher up in the vegetation (so not of interest to Freddie, fortunately). Male A. sagrei can get quite large and as you can see here, pretty feisty! The standoff lasted several minutes, and was repeated several times. But I’m afraid Freddie got the better of the plucky fellow in the end.
Paleobiologist Melissa Kemp spends a lot of time overturning assumptions. Her excavations don’t involve digging bleached bones out of windswept deserts, but looking for partially preserved lizard fossils in dark, dank jungle caves. Last month, she published a study tracking human-driven species introduction in the Caribbean through the region’s 7,000 years of human habitation—challenging the idea that “restoring” Caribbean biodiversity means taking it back to where it was before Christopher Columbus arrived in the so-called New World around 530 years ago.
Kemp, who runs a lab and teaches integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin, opened up on Twitter last week about her experience as a Black scientist and outdoorswoman, under the hashtag #BlackInNature—as part of continuing conversations about race in America following the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, and the harassment of Black birder Christian Cooper. She spoke with NOVA about decolonizing environmental restoration, tropical fossil quirks, and the joys of time outside.
Alissa Greenberg: Let’s start with the hashtag #BlackInNature, which you’ve used in tweeting about your love of spending time outside. What’s important about that time in nature for you? What do you feel like it does for you physically and emotionally?
Melissa Kemp: I love spending time in nature. I live in Austin now, in a much more urban environment than I was raised in. But it’s still very rejuvenating just to go outside and look at the sky, look at the plants, find animals on the property and just see that there’s life there. Even when I’m doing my field research, there’s bursts of active work where we’re hiking through the rainforest trying to get to our site. But then when we get there, it can be very slow. The work that we’re doing is very meditative. So nature is very therapeutic for me. It’s played a very important role for me personally and professionally.
Particularly thinking about the COVID crisis, so many people are trying to find solace in nature during this time. And I think, now more than ever, it really needs to be accessible to everyone, with everything that’s going on—not only to make discoveries in and learn about, but just to enjoy and to feel comfortable enjoying it.
The hashtag #BlackInNature was used to celebrate Black nature enthusiasts on May 31, the first day of #BlackBirdersWeek.
AG: Youmentioned in a tweet that you grew up exploring outside on land your great-great-great-grandfather bought after emancipation. So your family has been there ever since?
MK: Yes. I grew up in Maryland, outside of Baltimore. Not really that far from any city, but very, very rural and situated near a state park. And because of that, I had a lot of nature at my disposal. I grew up listening to stories. My mom and my aunts and uncles would tell stories about how they would go out in the woods and explore. So I always had a connection to nature. I never questioned that connection because I felt like I lived in it—even just knowing that my family had been there for so long. The church cemetery was across the road, so I could go in the woods and see the graves of my ancestors.
AG: You also mentioned in that same tweet that your grandmother taught you to mark recapture, the biology technique to help estimate animal populations.
MK: Especially during the summers when my cousins would be there, and my grandmother had all these kids to deal with, we would go around looking for animals. We always found turtles, eastern box turtles. We would write our initials on them in nail polish, which we really probably shouldn’t have been doing, and take care of them for a night, then release them. She would always tell us, “Look for your turtles,” and we would find them again. Sometimes years later, we would find a turtle and be like, “Wait, that’s MK, that’s my turtle!” She really encouraged us to just go out there and explore. I think it really rubbed off on me.
A painting by Melissa Kemp of part of her family’s property. Image courtesy of Melissa Kemp
AG: How did you end up working in integrative biology? And why did you choose to focus on islands?
MK: I didn’t come into science in the most traditional way. When I was growing up, I always thought I was going to be an artist. I went to art magnet schools as a kid and trained at a really high level, mostly painting and drawing. I still approach science in a way that is similar to how I approach art. This diligence of working on something for a very long time and also being open to feedback from others to make the work better. Art is a very iterative process. It can take years before a piece is done, and it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. I think a lot of the same concepts apply to science as well. And my eye for detail maybe helps me find nuances in materials I look at. When I’m working with fossils I’m constantly looking at different shapes and looking for differences in structures of the different fossils I’m handling.
I study how biodiversity in tropical regions originates both through processes of extinction and diversification, as well as colonization. Particularly, I’m interested in how changes in the environment then impact the different communities of organisms that we have. I’m interested in these past instances of change that we can see through the fossil record, because it’s the key to really understanding the biodiversity that we have today, but also helps us understand how biodiversity might change in the future.
Islands in particular are really interesting biologically, and there’s been a wealth of study of diverse life-forms of islands, particularly lizards. But we don’t really have as much literature on fossil occurrences of lizards. That’s why I started focusing on islands, because we really don’t have a thorough understanding of how we got to present day biodiversity.
Human-driven biodiversity change in the Caribbean did not start in 1492. There is a 7,000-year legacy of change.
AG: You recently published a paper that delves pretty deeply into that topic. Can you summarize what you were looking for and what you found?
MK: We were really interested in investigating how humans have modified the biota of the Caribbean, particularly through which species they’ve introduced. This paper is really thinking about what we are adding to the islands—and what are the impacts of what we’re adding? How do those introductions scale across time? We developed a database of species introductions by going through the archaeological literature, as well as the paleontological literature, to get a sense of what we know about species introductions, and then also what we don’t know.
I think one of the biggest takeaways is the fact that humans have been engineering the landscape for millennia, particularly these places that we think of as recently perturbed. Human-driven biodiversity change in the Caribbean did not start in 1492. There is a 7,000-year legacy of change. We have these terms that I don’t think are representative of the biodiversity of the Caribbean, like “New World.” They’re really terms steeped in European colonization, referring back to the Caribbean as something being “new” to Europeans, when people had been living there for a very, very long time.
When we think about what the Caribbean used to look like, if you ask somebody on the street that question, they’re probably going to think about before Columbus and Europeans came. And we are definitely interested in that period, very much so. But we’re also interested in what it looked like before any humans arrived. And we really want to acknowledge how Indigenous groups in the Caribbean moved around, what species they were bringing, how they were using species, and how their manipulation of the landscape changed biodiversity in the Caribbean.
AG: Why is it important to ask those questions? Not just culturally but also scientifically?
MK: We have to be realistic about what’s actually feasible. The ideal restoration target probably in the head of a lot of people in the public would be what the environment was like before we came and messed it all up. But it’s not a realistic target, in part because we’ve lost so many species that were in the landscape before humans arrived.
What we see in a lot of systems after an extinction of one animal is that you have an extinction cascade where other things go extinct because organisms are interconnected with one another. They don’t exist in silos in the landscape. So, if we remove a pollinator, the plants that were pollinated by it might also undergo decline. They might also go extinct. And that might affect soil erosion, for example. Maybe their roots provided important structure for soil. And if you’re eroding soil, maybe you’re interrupting something else’s habitat. So we would want to restore this system so that that plant is there, and so that that plant is pollinated by an organism in the system—but it might not be possible to do all of those things. So, we have to think about, what is it that we are hoping to accomplish through restoration?
Melissa Kemp excavating a cave site on the island of Marie-Galante, Guadeloupe. Image courtesty of Melissa Kemp
Maybe another takeaway from our research would be thinking about introductions of species and what they mean biologically. There’s a lot of different terminologies that we use for introduced species—I think one of the most common one is “invasive,” because we often think about the negative impacts of species introductions. Certainly there were instances where species had very, very negative impacts, but then there are also instances where species don’t seem to be having a negative impact on the environment and maybe are actually doing good things for those ecosystems.
The Caribbean had a lot of endemic mammals prior to human colonization. There were monkeys and a lot of really unique mammals—like these animals called Nesophontes, which are these shrewlike insectivores that are no longer there. We think that a lot of them were really important pollinators in the ecosystem that were then lost. But with the introduction of new birds to the Caribbean, for example, it’s possible that some of that loss of pollinators, that ecological service, may have been restored.
AG: I’ve read that paleontology in the tropics is particularly difficult. What makes it so hard?
MK: The environment of the tropics is not really conducive to fossilization processes. You need stable temperatures, ideally, cold temperatures and dry weather, to get good fossilization—and things covered up really quickly. The tropics are very hot and very humid. It’s just so hot, it’s so wet, that it’s going to erode away very quickly compared to something that’s in the Arctic, for example. There’s much more rapid disintegration when it’s hot and humid. Microbes breaking things down is certainly part of it. Also exposure to UV light—there’s physical damage being done to the material as well as biological damage.
So we don’t have a lot of fossilization in the tropics, but we do have some, particularly in environments where the material is somewhat shielded. Almost all of the work that I conduct is done in caves. We’re going through often heavily forested areas, in limestone landscapes where the humidity and precipitation cuts through the limestone and creates cavities. Usually materials get in there through water flow—when, let’s say, there’s a hurricane.
A lot of it is very fragmented bones. We’re not getting a full lizard, with the skin removed and the bones in perfect position. Some of them have features that are identifiable, some of them do not. I think that’s one of the reasons people have been turned off studying them in the past. A lot you can look at with the naked eye and figure out what part of the skeleton it is, but some of them you need to look at under a microscope.
A fossilized piece of the upper jaw of a lizard, retrieved from cave sediments on the island of Marie-Galante, Guadeloupe. Image courtesy of Melissa Kemp
AG: So what techniques have you used to sort of get around those challenges?
MK: The biggest thing is just not to disregard the data that do exist and brush it aside. If you want to get material from the tropics, it’s not necessarily going to be very, very flashy in the same way that maybe a T. rex skull would be, but there are valuable data out there. Another thing that we do to get around some of the challenges is we just keep on looking. It requires us to interface with people in that area, talking to people about where caves are, if they’ve ever seen fossils.
So it’s very much a community effort, in terms of the work that we do. Finding sites with the help of local people. So local people who are out there exploring the caves for fun often have been a real godsend for us, very helpful in orienting us on the land. They’re almost always happy to show us and then interact with us when we tell them more about what we’re doing. And that’s always really fun.
I think it’s a function of where I do fieldwork that I have always felt safe in the field. I work in spaces where there are very diverse cultures that are not my own, often cultures where Black people are dominant or brown people are dominant. When I worked in Guadeloupe, for example—a French-speaking island in the Lesser Antilles where the majority of people are Black and Creole—if I kept my mouth shut, people just assumed I was from Guadeloupe. Being an outsider hasn’t been a source of fear in those landscapes.
Just seeing my grandmother as a Black property owner in a small town where there were not many other Black property owners was very inspiring. I don’t know if it’s the right word for it, but I felt that the outdoors belonged to me and that it was my right to be there.
AG: To that end, what’s important about the conversations we’re having now, around the incident with Christian Cooper and the #BlackInNature and #BlackBirdersWeek hashtags? What would you hope might come out of them?
MK: It’s important because it reinforces, particularly for us as Black people, that we belong here, that this country is ours. We had a very, very instrumental part in creating what we have today in this country, even as we continue to be oppressed. I think it’s also important for non-Black people to hear that as well, that they recognize those contributions. I feel very privileged to have had a very positive association with the outdoors all my life. Just seeing my grandmother as a Black property owner in a small town where there were not many other Black property owners was very inspiring. I don’t know if it’s the right word for it, but I felt that the outdoors belonged to me and that it was my right to be there.
I heard messages going through school from other people like, “Oh, nature is more of a white space.” But I really rejected those messages because I had this pride in my family history, and my connection to the land, and my family’s connection to the land. I just felt like everyone else had it all wrong, that they just didn’t know the history of this country well enough—how tied, for better or for worse, African Americans are to the land. It’s a very painful history, sometimes, to think about how many Black Americans got to this country, why we were brought to this country in the first place, to work the land that white people didn’t want to work.
For me, at least, learning that history has really made me feel more grounded in the space that I occupy. I’ve always felt grounded because of my very strong family history. But I know a lot of Black Americans don’t have that. Talking to distant cousins that I share lineage with further back, helping them learn about the history of enslavement of our family, has really helped ground them as well.
Whenever people may have made snide comments—“I’m afraid of the woods,” or, “The woods is a white space”—I’m very comfortable with my story and being like, “Well, I’m here. My family’s here. They’ve been on this land for six generations. You can’t tell me it doesn’t belong to me.”
According to no less authoritative a source than Coin World, the most fabulous new currency for 2019 is the 100-florin bill (about $56 US) from the island of Aruba. You can read all about it in CW‘s article below, but let me highlight the important point that our very own Anolis lineatus is featured prominently on the bill (as well it should be). Clearly, the message here is that if you (you being a country) want to gain accolades for your currency, putting an anole on the note is a wise move. Perhaps some of our more artistically gifted readers can mock up some examples?
Aruba 100-florin note named Banknote of the Year for 2019
By Arthur L. Friedberg , Special to Coin World
Published: Apr 20, 2020, 8 AM
Aruba’s new 100-florin note was named Banknote of the Year for 2019 by the voting membership of the International Bank Note Society. The winner bested 21 other contenders selected from among the over 100 new notes issued last year. The finalists were the only ones considered new enough in design to be considered for the award.
The IBNS said that Aruba’s entry led almost from the start of balloting. While every nominee received at least some votes, immediately behind Aruba were the Eastern Caribbean States $10 bank note with multiple motifs, the Ulster Bank of Northern Ireland’s £5 note showing flying geese with people on the shoreline, and Switzerland’s 1,000-franc bank note with human hands in the main design. Norway’s 1,000-kroner note with a cascading wave design was in fifth place.
The IBNS competition began in 2004, but this was Aruba’s first entry.
Canada’s $10 bank note won for 2018, breaking a two-year run by Switzerland with its 10- and 50-franc notes.
Aruba issued a new five-note series of 1-, 5-, 10-, 25-, 100- and 200-florin notes at one time on June 30, 2019. (The florin is pegged to the U.S. dollar at a rate of 1.79:1.)
The series, called the “Stars of Aruba,” was the first redesign in 30 years. Their vertical format draws on artistic elements from Aruba’s culture, flora, and fauna. They were jointly developed with Crane Currency, who also did the printing. Given Aruba’s small population of 120,000, the central bank needed to balance anti-counterfeit technology with production costs, and did so utilizing high-relief printing, watermarks, color-changing ink, the Omron Rings, and Motion Surface, Crane’s 3D moving stripe with miniaturized micro-optics.
The face of the 100-florin note is predominantly emerald green in color with a large iguana in its center and an indigenous lizard, the striped anole (Anolis lineatus) on the left. The green and blue back features women in native dress dancing and leaves from the aloe plant, an economic mainstay.
Jane Semeleer, president of the Central Bank of Aruba, said, “It is very clear that we have managed to create a beautiful family of bank notes. We have one of the most innovative and modern banknote series in the world. And we’re very proud that our vision — to make Arubans proud of their country and to show the world the rich life of Aruba — has led to an award winning 100 florin banknote.”
Semeleer added, “We had to present a better product that the public could fall in love with — and we succeeded. The reactions since the launch have been very positive. Shortly after the co-circulation started, 80 percent of the old banknotes where exchanged.”
About the award
Among the criteria for the nominated notes, according to the IBNS, “Banknotes nominated must have been issued to the public (specimens and non-circulating currencies are inelligble) for the first time during the year of the award, and must have artistic merit and/or innovative security features, and be in general circulation.”
Notes were judged and “the winner [was] decided by a vote of the IBNS, who will consider the artistic merit, design, use of colour, contrast, balance, and security features of each nomination,” according to the IBNS.
“The IBNS Banknote of the Year award is an initiative of the IBNS to recognize an exceptional banknote issued each year,” according to the organization.
The global prayer that motivates the celebration of Biodiversity Day today is a call to stop the loss of biological diversity, that is, the variety of species of plants, animals, and microorganisms that inhabit the planet in its various ecosystems.
Why is this biological variety important? For the United Nations, “biological resources are the pillars that sustain civilizations.” For example?
“Fish provide 20% of animal protein to some 3 billion people. More than 80% of the human diet is made up of plants. Approximately 80% of people living in rural areas of developing countries depend on traditional plant-based medicines for basic health care,” says the agency.
However, an estimated one million animal and plant species are currently endangered.
FLORA IN DANGER
In the DR, for 2011, the List of Endangered, Threatened or Protected Species of the Dominican Republic (Red List) published by the Ministry of the Environment indicated that “of the approximately 6,000 vascular plant species reported for the Dominican Republic, 547 were found to have some category of threat.”
Later, updated data collected in the Red List of Vascular Flora in the Dominican Republic (2016) indicate that some 1,388 plant species present some degree of threat. Some 841 more species than those registered in 2011.
Which of these species are the ones with the highest degree of vulnerability and critical status?
Research indicates that among the families with the highest percentage of their species under some degree of threat are those of orchids (Orchidaceae), palms (Arecaceae), and cacti (Cactaceae).
Indeed, of the orchid family, 145 of the 268 species studied are critically endangered, including the cacatica ( Tolumnia henekenii ) and the Quisqueya rosea.
25 species were included from the palm family (Arecaceae). Of these, there are 13 critically endangered: the red Manacla, Calyptronoma plumeriana; guano: Coccothrinax boschiana; the lake guano: Coccothrinax jimenezii; the guano de costa:Coccothrinax montana Burret; the palm Coccothrinax scoparia Becc; the tame guano: Coccothrinax spissa LH Bailey; el yarey: Copernicia berteroana Becc; the rain palm: Gaussia attenuata; the search Pseudophoenix sargentii H. Wendl; the frisk Pseudophoenix vinífera; the wild coquito: Reinhardtia paiewonskiana; the Thrinax radiata palm and the guaney: Zombia antillarum.
Of the cacti, eight species are critically endangered: the Bánica rose ( Pereskia marcanoi Areces ), the Bayahibe rose ( Pereskia Quisqueyana Alain), the spiny melon ( Melocactus lemairei and Melocactus pedernalensis ), the rose ( Pereskia portulacifolia ), the Melocactus praerupticola Arece s; the pitajaya ( Harrisia nashii Briton ) and the cagüey or avocado ( Dendrocereus undulosus ).
Within the families of compound flowers (Asteráceas), of the 99 analyzed there are 76 in critical condition, among them the Salcedoa mirabaliarum.
Other plants that are listed as critically endangered are three species of conifers (juniper): Juniperus gracilior var. ekmanii, Juniperus gracilior var. gracilior and Juniperus gracilior var. urbaniana and the cross stick (Podocarpus hispaniolensis laubenfels ).
The distribution of local fauna is as follows: 483 species of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals; 527 species of marine and freshwater fish and 8,529 species of invertebrates (6,833 terrestrial and 1,696 marine). In total, 9,539 species, according to the 2011 List of Endangered, Threatened or Protected Species of the Dominican Republic (Red List) .
Which are in the worst state of conservation?
Among the critically endangered fish are two types of native grouper, Epinephelus itajara and Epinephelus striatus, and the endemic fish Cyprinodon higuey and Cyprinodon nicholsi.
Amphibians and lizards are among the most vulnerable. About to disappear are the endemic species of the Hispaniola crested toad ( Peltophryne fluviatica ); the Jarabacoa burrowing frog ( Eleutherodactylus bothroboans ); the red-legged frog of La Selle ( Eleutherodactylus furcyensis ); the La Selle brown frog ( Eleutherodactylus jugans ); the southern pastel frog ( Eleutherodactylus leoncei ) and the green spiny frog ( Eleutherodactylus nortoni ).
Also the Neiba telegraph frog ( Eleutherodactylus notidodes ); Neiba’s whistling frog ( Eleutherodactylus parabates ); the Rucilla stream frog ( Eleutherodactylus rucillensis), the Bahoruco red-legged frog ( Eleutherodactylus rufifemoralis ); the northern stream frog ( Eleutherodactylus schmidti ); the Massif du Nord’s whistling frog ( Eleutherodactylus sommeri ) and the Vallejuelo burrowing frog ( Eleutherodactylus tychathrous ).
Among the reptiles, the most threatened are the hawksbill turtle, Eretmochelys imbricata; the giant lucia of Villa Altagracia, Celestus anelpistus; the lucia of Pico Duarte, Celestus marcanoi; the slender Alto Velo anolis (lizard), Anolis altavelensis; the green-banded lizard, Anolis fowleri; the long-nosed lizard from La Selle, Anolis hendersoni; the sturdy red fan lizard, Anolis marcanoi; the Neiba twig lizard, Anolis placidus; the ricord iguana, Cyclura ricordii and the lizard Leiocephalus altavelensis.
Two species of skid lizards also appear in critical condition, Mabuya lineolata (striped skink from Hispaniola) and Mabuya sloanii (greater skink from the Antilles) and thirteen species of geckos or geckos (spherodactyls), all endemic.
Running snakes Haitiophis anomalus, Hypsirhynchus melanichnus, Laltris agyrtes and laltris haetianus; the snakes Mitophis absolepis, Mitophis calypso , Mitophis pyrites and Typhlops syntherus are also almost in critical condition, as is the American crocodile, Crocodylus acutus.
Of the birds, the diablotín ( Pterodroma hasitata ), the Spanish sparrowhawk ( Buteo ridgwayi ), the barb ( Coccyzus rufigularis ) and the owls Asio flammeus and Asio stygius are critically endangered.
The manatee ( Trichechus manatus ) is among the most threatened marine species and, as a curious fact, the solenodon ( Solenodon paradoxus) does not appear in the category of critical danger, but “endangered.”
Crested anoles are curious and not shy. (Source photo by Gail Karlsson)
During the Virgin Islands ‘safer at home’ phase, I have found myself engaging more frequently with my non-human housemates – especially the lizards.
Most days I’ll be working at a table on our screened ground-level porch. The screen door is loose along the bottom, which has allowed a small lizard to come inside and share my work space. It is a Crested Anole (Anolis cristatellus), which has a permanent ridge along its back and tail. (Smaller crested anoles with light stripes on their back are either young, or female.)
Anoles are quiet and mostly eat bugs, which I appreciate. (The name rhymes with ravioli.) They are curious, and not scary or threatening. However, this one sometimes shows aggressive behavior if another anole enters its territory – even if it is on the outside of the screen – by doing push-ups and extending the dewlap under its chin.
Anoles are quite plentiful, and a favorite food for the American Kestrels, and Great Egrets living in the neighborhood. Recently I saw a kestrel blast over and snatch an anole up from the ground just outside the porch in a split-second attack. It definitely would have been safer inside the house.
Kestrels in the Virgin Islands seem to mostly eat anoles. (Source photo by Gail Karlsson)
Outside the front door is a small entry deck, where my husband puts a bowl of kibbles for the neighborhood cats. If they don’t finish it, a Ground Lizard (Ameiva exsul) might stop by to grab a bite. This lizard is sometimes called a ‘skink’ in the Virgin Islands, although that name generally refers to a different, rarer species. The ground lizard is larger and beefier than the anoles, with a snake-like body. It moves very quickly, swinging from side to side, more like a ‘slink’.
A ground lizard came by to eat a few kibbles from the cats’ dish. (Source photo by Gail Karlsson)
There is an old teak chair by the door, which for some reason recently attracted a bright, young Green Iguana. They don’t usually come into the house, though there was that time when my son’s girlfriend came to visit and reached into her suitcase to find an iguana sitting in there. Someone must have left the door open.
A juvenile green iguana came to sit on the outdoor chair. (Source photo by Gail Karlsson)
These iguanas get darker, spiky-backed, and considerably less attractive when they get larger – especially when one decides to take a dip in the pool.
An adult green iguana decided to cool off in the pool. (Source photo by Gail Karlsson)
I had another eek! moment recently when I got out the large pasta pot and something dark was crawling around in it. After I jumped, I realized it was not a gross roach, but a Dwarf Gecko (Sphaerodactylus macrolepus), which some people call a ‘wood slave’. They are nocturnal, and I only seen them occasionally, like when I move a picture frame on the wall and one is sleeping behind there and quickly runs off.
I have never been able to get a good look at one, so I grabbed my camera and took a few shots of this one before it crawled up the side of the pot and hopped out.
The photos turned out to have a surprisingly existential quality, I thought, capturing the general feeling of safer-at-home isolation, confinement and vertigo.
A dwarf gecko was quarantining in the pasta pot. (Source photo by Gail Karlsson)
Gail Karlsson is an environmental lawyer, writer and photographer – author of The Wild Life in an Island House, plus the guide book Learning About Trees and Plants – A Project of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of St. John. See uufstjohn.com/treeproject and gvkarlsson.blogspot.com. Follow her on Instagram @gailkarlsson
Lepidoterist and keen naturalist Andrei Sourakov from the Florida State Museum posted this photo on Twitter.
This is actually an effective, if somewhat mean to the little insects, way of watching anoles, as Stan Rand noted in his 1975 paper of A. agassizi: “In the West Indies, a well-established method for attracting large numbers of anoles is to break open a termite nest. Under such conditions, large numbers will often gather and feed actively with little aggressive interaction.”
They do! Rodríguez-Cabrera and colleagues report in the latest issue of Euscorpius: Occasional Papers in Scorpiology on predation on scorpions in Cuba. In addition to the A. homolechis and A. sagrei shown above (left and right, respectively), A. equestris was also observed eating a scorpion.
I could have sworn we had a post on this some years ago, but can find no record of it in the Annals. So, just to get up to speed, Death in Paradise is a British detective show set on the island of Guadeloupe (Update, April 2021: the island is Saint Marie, a fictitious island in the vicinity of Guadeloupe and Martinique). A recurring character is Harry, who looks more-or-less like an anole. The show is set in Guadeloupe, hence the reasonable supposition that he is an A. marmoratus, as some articles explicitly state.
Speaking of articles, this post is prompted by a number of recent press articles highlighting Harry, including this piece in The Sun and another in the Daily Express. And one more from earlier this year. You may not be surprised to learn that Harry is not played by a real saurian actor, but rather is the result of CGI. The Sun‘s piece provides more detail, including the embedded video.
More favorite details on our favorite TV character can be found on his Wiki Fandom page.
Stan Rand’s Super 8 Film from the 1972 Malpelo Expedition
Kevin de Queiroz
Research Zoologist and Curator of Amphibians and Reptiles
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
This film was made by Austin Stanley Rand (1932–2005), a biologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) (1964–1997), during a six-day expedition to Malpelo Island, a small (1.2 km2), remote, oceanic island located some 500 km west of the Colombian mainland, in late February and early March of 1972. The Expedition involved 17 scientists from STRI, the republics of Colombia and Panamá, and several US universities, as well as the assistance of the United States Navy. The scientific findings of the Expedition were published in the series Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology (Number 176) in 1975, in a volume edited by Jeffrey B. Graham (1941–2011), one of the STRI biologists who participated in the Expedition. The volume contains 14 articles, five of which are on the lizards of Malpelo, including three on the endemic Anolisagassizi, two on the endemic Diploglossus millepunctatus (one of which is also on A. agassizi), and one describing a new endemic species of leaf-toed geckos, Phyllodactylus transversalis. As a result of prompting from George Gorman, who participated in the Expedition, and Jonathan Losos, I obtained a digital copy of the film from the Smithsonian Archives with the help of Archivist Ellen Alers. The film is a little under 11 minutes long and there is no audio. The notes about the contents of the film below were prepared mostly from information in the Malpelo Expedition Volume, with some additions based on web searches and input from George Gorman. Literature citations are for articles in the Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology Malpelo Expedition Volume unless otherwise indicated. Thanks to George Gorman and Ross Kiester for comments on an earlier version.
0:10: Adult male Anolis agassizi, Malpelo or Agassiz’s Anole. The species was named by Smithsonian Zoologist Leonard Stejneger in 1900 after Alexander Agassiz, leader of an 1891 Expedition aboard the USS Albatross that visited Malpelo and collected the first specimens.
0:20: Map showing the location of Malpelo Island (ca. 500 km west of mainland Colombia).
0:29: The USS York County (US Navy). This De Soto County-class Tank Landing Ship transported the Expedition participants from Panama to Malpelo and back.
0:32: Ship deck (the ship was decommissioned later that same year, 1972).
0:40: Crew members of the USS York (sweeping the deck).
0:46: A. Ross Kiester (Ph.D. 1975, Harvard University, Advisor: Ernest E. Williams; STRI Predoctoral Fellow, 1970–1971). Kiester authored a paper in the Malpelo Expedition Volume on the natural history of the endemic anguid lizard species Diploglossus millepunctatus.
0:53: George C. Gorman (Ph.D. 1968, Harvard University, Advisor: E. E. Williams; UCLA professor at the time of the Expedition) lying on deck. Gorman co-authored three articles in the Malpelo Expedition Volume, including one on the natural history, behavior and ecology of Anolis agassizi and another on the chromosomes of Anolis agassizi and Diploglossus millepunctatus.
1:00: Several Anolis agassizi licking a cut orange. The anoles are very abundant on the island. In the Malpelo Expedition Volume, Rand et al. (1975) estimated the population density to be 1 anole/5-10 square meters and a total population of at least 100,000 anoles on the small island.
1:11: Malpelo Island from the southeast (?).
1:20: Part of island closer up. The sides are very steep and landing is difficult.
1:27: Close-up of rock (island surface). The island is composed primarily of igneous rock and is of volcanic origin. Very few large (vascular) plants occur there, though several species of mosses and lichens are present.
1:33: Aerial view of island (from the northwest). The Expedition produced a new map of the island (see Kiester and Hoffman, 1975).
1:39: Map showing the topography of the ocean floor. Malpelo is part of Malpelo Ridge and is the only island on that ridge.
1:45: Nazca Booby (Sula granti). This is most abundant breeding bird species on Malpelo (Pitman et al., 1995, The marine birds of Malpelo Island, Colombia. Colonial Waterbirds 18:113–119, wherein it is called Sula dactylatra). The population was estimated by Pitman et al. (1995) to be 24,000 individuals. Referred to in the Malpelo Expedition Volume as Masked or Blue-faced Boobies, Sula dactylatra granti.
1:50: Seabirds flying. Other bird species known from Malpelo include Red-billed Tropicbirds, Red-footed Boobies, Black and Brown Noddies, White Terns, and Great and Magnificent Frigatebirds (Pitman et al., 1995).
2:00: Diploglossus millepunctatus, a Dotted or Malpelo Galliwasp. This is an anguid lizard species endemic to Malpelo.
2:02: Preserved specimens of Phyllodactylus transversalis, Malpelo Leaf-toed Geckos. This was a new species discovered on the Malpelo Expedition and described in the Malpelo Expedition Volume by Raymond B. Huey (Ph.D. 1976; Harvard University, Advisor: Ernest E. Williams).
2:06: This shot seems to show the abundance of anoles in a small area. Anolis agassizi was found not to be territorial, unlike most of its close relatives, and to exhibit relatively little intraspecific aggression.
2:21: Anole on a camera illustrating tameness and/or curiosity. Rand et al. reported that they often approached observers and unusual objects.
2:24: Clipboard with a map of Malpelo showing the routes taken by the exploration party (compare with Figure 4 in Kiester and Hoffman, 1975).
2:26: Anoles in a scuffle (chase and display).
2:32: Anoles on equipment (again showing abundance and curiosity).
2:37: Anoles at orange, licking, numerous individuals. Oranges were put out after the researchers noticed that the anoles seemed attracted to the color orange (Kodak film package, cap of suntan lotion container). The anoles normally eat insects, primarily ants and beetles (Rand et al., 1975).
3:21: Large marked male anole performing a headbob display. Marking was used to estimate home ranges.
3:30: More headbobs (different individual?). This is a typical anole display. The Malpelo anoles performed it infrequently compared to other anole species.
3:37: Large marked male A. agassizi performing more head bobs and dewlap extension. Malpelo anoles have relatively small dewlaps.
3:50: Attacks another male.
3:53: Nuchal crest and dewlap extended. This species has a relatively small dewlap, likely related to its lack of territoriality and reduced aggression.
4:04: Two males displaying and biting. The closer one appears to be tethered.
4:15: Males with jaws locked. Despite these cases, at least some of which appear to involve instigation by the researchers, aggression was found to be low in this species (Rand et al., 1975).
4:21: Male anole. Rosario Castañeda (2010, Ph. D. dissertation, George Washington University) found A. agassizi to be ecomorphologically divergent from other Dactyloa-clade species in having an exceptionally large number of toepad lamellae.
4:31: Anoles (some of which are marked) at orange. Note that the anoles do not attempt to monopolize this resource by displaying at each other or chasing each other away (Rand et al., 1975). The larger ones with the black heads are males.
4:47: Series of preserved Anolis agassizi specimens. No hatchlings were found during the Expedition, suggesting seasonal reproduction (Rand et al., 1975).
4:57: Dissected Anolis specimen showing testes. Probably one of the large males with a black head and nuchal crest.
5:02: Dissected Anolis specimen showing an egg. A little over 50% of the sampled females had oviducal eggs or enlarging follicles (Rand et al., 1975).
5:06: Testes again. Rand et al. (1975) found that some large males lack male secondary sexual characters (black head and erect nuchal crest) and have regressed testes (obviously, this isn’t one of them).
5:11: Back at the orange. The anoles both lick and bite the orange.
5:28: Dissected gut cavity. Possibly showing fat bodies or perhaps this is the male morph with regressed testes or perhaps showing the darkly pigmented peritoneum, a characteristic of lizards that live in areas of high insolation (Rand et al., 1975).
5:35: Back at the orange again.
5:51: Part of island with ocean in background (and birds). The shot pans to a small boat that was presumably used to transport the researchers to the island from the large ship.
6:02: Endemic Malpelo land crab, Johngarthia malpilensis. (Referred to in the Malpelo Expedition Volume as Gecarcinus malpilensis.)
6:08: Crab interaction with Diploglossus. D. millepunctutus is one of the largest anguids and one of the largest Diploglossus species. It is known to feed on dead crabs (Kiester, 1975).
6:24: Anolis agassizi male (marked).
6:30: A researcher tying a hookless fishing fly on fishing line. Ross Kiester thinks that the researcher may be William M. Rand, brother of A. Stanley Rand and co-author of the article on Anolis agassizi in the Malpelo Expedition Volume (Rand et al., 1975).
6:33: Anoles trying to capture the fly. Malpelo anoles are known to eat real flies (Diptera).
6:45: Anoles with green chuckles candy. The “Chuckles Experiment” was undertaken to test for a color preference (Rand et al., 1975). The results indicated a preference for orange and yellow Chuckles candies over red and green ones and even more so over black ones. Rand et al. speculated that this preference could be related to feeding on the yolks of broken seabird eggs.
6:52: Setting out red Chuckles candy.
6:54: Anoles on rock (more Chuckles).
6:59: Anole with red and orange Chuckles candies.
7:15: This sequence shows anoles drinking from a crevice, as reported in the Malpelo Expedition Volume by Rand et al. (1975). There are many small seeps, springs and rock pools on the island (Rand et al., 1975). Other experiments have shown that Malpelo anoles are not particularly tolerant of water loss (Rand et al., 1975).
7:43: More drinking.
7:57: Taking body temperature via the cloaca (a standard herpetological method). Rand et al. (1975) found that A. agassizi exhibits similar body-temperature preferences to other anoles.
8:05: Part of island (from boat?).
8:10: Anole runs and stops in the shade. Anoles were active during most of the day in the shade and didn’t spend much time basking (Rand et al., 1975).
8:24: Back at the half orange.
8:38: Anoles flee and a Diploglossus approaches. The Galliwasp is known to prey on anoles, but anoles are not its primary food source (Rand et al., 1975). On the other hand, Rand et al. reported that 85% of the Malpelo Anoles had regenerated tails.
8:49: Anoles.
8:52: Diploglossus departs. This is probably the individual mentioned by Rand et al. (1975) that repeatedly approached the orange when anoles were present, but did not eat the orange.
8:57: Large male anole moving up rock.
9:05: Diploglossus millepunctatus.
9:09: Anole running.
9:12: Diploglossus running. I assume that the anole is running from the galliwasp rather than the other way around.
9:17: Land crab (Johngarthia malpilensis).
9:20: Land crab and Diploglossus. Malpelo Galliwasps are known to feed on dead crabs (Kiester, 1975).
9:26: Nazca Boobies (Sula granti), adult and chick.
9:28: Diploglossusmillepunctatus. Kiester (1975) reported that when a booby chick squawks upon return of the parent to the nest, nearby galliwasps immediately run to the vicinity of the birds and will snatch and eat any fishes that are dropped.
9:33: Nazca Boobies (adult and chick) again.
9:36: Diploglossus eating a crab claw.
9:40: Two Diploglossus eating a dead crab.
9:46: Anoles back at the half orange (zoom out).
10:20: Close up of anoles at orange again.
10:40: Different shot of anoles at orange (some dart in and out).
