Author: Jonathan Losos Page 95 of 130

The good folks at Lab Animal, put out by the Nature Publishing Group, have named the green anole Miss June, er, I mean Model Animal of the Month in their June issue. If you’re not familiar with this periodical, it’s a “peer-reviewed journal publishing timely and informative editorial material emphasizing proper management and care. Lab Animal reaches over 10,000 professionals in both the academic world and applied research industries.” Obviously, quite a perceptive bunch, and the article, “The Ever Adaptable Anole,” is quite accurate and informative.

Anon. (2012). The ever-adaptable anole Lab Animal, 41 (6), 149-149 DOI: 10.1038/laban0612-149

Follow their exploits as they rampage through the eastern Caribbean, measuring dewlap spectra and general wreaking havoc. Most recently, they’ve been to St. Croix to examine the enigmatic Anolis acutus, a refugee of the cristatellus clade that somehow made its way from Puerto Rico and now flourishes as the only anole on this island. Most amazingly, the density of this species is outrageously high, with many males peacefully coexisting on a single tree, like a bunch of hippies. Why do they do this? If anyone can figure this out, Manuel Leal, Leo Fleishman and company are just the ones. Stay tuned to Chipojo Lab for further updates.

Tweeted by Meet Your Neighbors, who describes itself thusly: Founded in 2009, Meet Your Neighbours is a worldwide photographic initiative created by Niall Benvie and Clay Bolt. The project is dedicated to reconnecting people with the wildlife on their own doorsteps – and enriching their lives in the process. These creatures and plants are vital to people: they represent the first, and for some, the only contact with wild nature we have. Yet too often they are overlooked, undervalued.

Seems every few months, another journal has the good sense to put an anole on the cover. Most recent: the new journal Ecology and Evolution, which only took 19 issues to get with the program. We’ll be reporting on the article soon, but for now, enjoy the cover, which is another beautiful photograph by Neil Losin. And here’s a montage of all the recent covers…unless I’ve forgotten one.

Grand Prize

Last year we had an Anolis photo contest and produced a 2012 anole calendar. Both were wildly successful. Today, Anole Annals is pleased to announce it is combining both. We herewith announce the 2012 Anole Photo Contest. The goal of the contest is to identify 12 winning photos.  The grand prize winner will have her/his photo featured on the front cover of the 2013 Anole Annals calendar and will receive an autographed copy of Karen Cusick’s lovely book, Lizards on the Fence. The second place winner will receive a copy of the calendar and have her/his photo featured on the backcover of the calendar.

This year’s calendar. Put your photo on the cover of next year’s version!

The rules: please submit photos as attachments to anoleannals@gmail.com. To ensure that submissions with large attachments arrive, it’s a good idea to send an accompanying e-mail without any attachments that seeks confirmation of the photos receipt.  Photos must be at least 150 dpi and print to a size of 11 x 17 inches. If you do not have experience resizing and color-correcting your images, the simplest thing to do is to submit the raw image files produced by your digital camera (or, for the luddites, a high quality digital scan of a printed image). If you elect to alter your own images, don’t forget that its always better to resize than to resample. Images with watermarks or other digital alterations that extend beyond color correction, sharpening and other basic editing will not be accepted. We are not going to deal with formal copyright law and ask only your permission to use your image for the calendar and related content on Anole Annals. We, in turn, agree that your images will never be used without attribution and that we will not profit financially from their use (nobody is going to make any money from the sale of these calendars because they’ll be available directly from the vendor).

Please provide a short description of the photo that includes: (1) the species name, (2) the location where the photo was taken, and (3) any other relevant information. Twelve winning photos will be selected by readers of Anole Annals from a set of 28 finalists chosen by the editors of Anole Annals.  The grand prize winning and runner-up photos will be chosen by a panel of anole photography experts. Deadline for submission is September 30, 2012.

From Nathan Watson’s instagram page.