Springer recently published a new and dramatically expanded version of Pardis’s book Analysis of Phylogenetics and Evolution with R. This book is a great way to teach yourself some of the amazing techniques available for phylogeneticists and comparative biologists via the R statistical computing environment. With 386 pages, the new edition is nearly twice as large as the previous version (211 pages). Countless new methods are covered, and many problems with the previous edition are remedied. In spite of the expansion and improvements, the sticker price is actually lower on the new edition ($65) than it was on the old edition ($75). You can pick up a copy for around $50 at places like Amazon.com. This book should be considered required reading for anyone doing modern phylogenetic and comparative analyses. If you need anoles to inspire an interest in learning R, I’ll be posting shortly on some R tutorials that use anoles as case studies.
Author: Rich Glor Page 6 of 13
Anole Annals has certainly had its share of posts about anole sex (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4). Today I’m posting another photo of anoles having sex along with a rare shot of the immediate aftermath. As you can see in the photo on the right of a pair of Anolis chlorocyanus from the Dominican Republic, the male’s hemipenis generally remains exposed for a few a seconds after mating. During this time, the male tends to walks awkwardly away from the female while raising his pelvis off the substrate to get his junk in order.
Breakdown of anoles in the Schwartz collection housed at KU, highlighting proportional representation of the five most frequently sampled species.
Albert Schwartz was a prolific describer of new anole species and author of peerless contributions to our understanding of geographic variation within and among widespread anole species (see 1 and 2). In addition to his published contributions, Schwartz and his colleagues accumulated a massive collection of preserved specimens that continues to serve as a foundation for research on anoles. Although these specimens are now housed at a number of institutions, the bulk of his anole material – 15,511 specimens to be precise – can now be found at the University of Kansas. This collection includes representatives of 93 anole species, but the sampling among species is highly uneven and the five most frequently sampled species account for more than 35% of the total collection. Sampling of these top five species ranges from 552 to 1838 individuals. My trivia question to you, my fellow anole enthusiasts, is “What are the top five species in Schwartz’s KU collection?” As a hint, I’ll remind you that Schwartz’s efforts were focused primarily on the northern Caribbean and that he spent the last few decades of his career working extensively on Hispaniola.
The species pictured above has one of the largest dewlaps of any anole, with a ceratobranchial that extends posteriorly well beyond the forelimbs. What species is it?
Today marks a sad day in the history of anole biology: the anole hunter’s best friend has just gone out of production. Before explaining what I mean, I need to provide some additional details for the uninitiated. Most anoles are caught primarily with a lasso made of dental floss attached to the end of a pole. We’ve debated the best material for making lassos but haven’t spent much time on the poles (except here). Although just about anything ranging from a stick to a golf club can be used as a lizard catching pole, the best lizard poles are generally fashioned from fishing rods. Fishing rods are ideal for lizard catching because they are both light and long. For many years, the biggest challenge associated with the use of fishing poles was that they can be relatively difficult to transport. Rods that could telescope out to 12-20′ generally had only three or four segments, meaning that even a fully collapsed rod was 4-5′ long (too long to be easy to travel with or carry around in the field). This problem was solved a number of years ago when Cabela’s began producing a new line of telescoping panfish rods that could extend from just over a foot to 10-14′ (they’re no longer listed in the Cabela’s catalogue but you can still find prices and product information at some on-line retailers like Yahoo). If you check out the reviews, you’ll see that people have used these poles for everything from fishing to herping to displaying “worship banners.” These inexpensive Cabela’s rods have been my primary anole catching tool for over a decade. I was deeply saddened when I learned today that Cabela’s will no longer be filling orders for their telescopic panfish rods. We actually placed this order weeks ago and have been told they were on back-order until today, when we were told simply that our order could not be filled and was being cancelled. I guess we’re going to have to go through and repair all those broken rods we accumulated over the past decade…
Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery by Jennie Erin Smith is a page-turning historical account of the most notorious reptile smugglers in the United States. Many of the stories in Stolen World are derived from first-hand accounts provided by a core group of old-school smugglers, most notably Hank Molt and Tom Crutchfield. I was shocked at how open these folks were about their practices, particular given that some of them are still actively collecting, importing, and selling rare reptiles. Indeed, some of the book’s primary subjects now seem to regret their decision to share so much with Smith (I’ll return to this point later).
Congratulations to Anole Annal’s blogger Jonathan Losos on receiving the National Academy of Science’s Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal, which is awarded every four years for “meritorious work in zoology or paleontology published in a three- to five-year period.” The NAS recognized Losos for his “novel and penetrating evolutionary studies of adaptive radiation in vertebrates,” many of which are summarized in his recent book on anoles. The Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal‘s list of previous recipients reads like a who’s who of prominent 20th century ecologists and evolutionary biologists, and includes the man who coined the term adaptive radiation (Henry Fairfield Osborn ’29) and several of the main architects of the modern synthesis (Dobzhansky ’41, G. G. Simpson ’44 & 65, Sewall Wright ’45, and Ernst Mayr ’67). The fact that the medal is the size of dinner plate has not deterred Losos from wearing it daily.
I previously characterized Albert Schwartz as one of the five kings of Greater Antillean anole taxonomy for having described eight new species from the region. Although Schwartz described the fewest species among the five kings, focusing on new species masks Schwartz’s even more important contributions to cataloguing geographic variation within species. Schwartz’s career-spanning interest in biogeography and geographic variation resulted in a prolific history of describing subspecies in anoles and other taxa. Anyone who’s looked at Schwartz and Henderson’s classic book on West Indian reptiles and amphibians is familiar with the irregular blobs that designate subspecies boundaries on the range maps for many of the region’s most geographically widespread species. Many of these blobs were the result of Schwartz’s own efforts. The pinnacle of Schwartz’s work on geographic variation may be his 1968 monograph on geographic variation in Anolis distichus.
Pop quiz: What do Anolis and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum have in common? Answer: A Google problem.
Rick Santorum’s google problem is that the first hits you obtain when you google “Santorum” are related to the author Dan Savage’s efforts to criticize Santorum’s campaign against homosexuality.
What’s Anolis‘s google problem?
The last of the five kings described more new anoles than any of the others: Orlando Garrido. Garrido is unique among the five in two ways. First, he’s still alive, still active, and still making contributions to our understanding of anole diversity. Second, he’s actually a citizen of a Greater Antillean country: Cuba.
Garrido is often recognized as Cuba’s greatest naturalist. In addition to his impressive body of work with reptiles, he has made many other important contributions to our understanding of Cuban nature, including the spectacular “Field Guide to the Birds of Cuba.” His successes are a testament to how far science has come since Barbour’s time, when practicing science in the West Indies required a wealthy North American pedigree. I’ve credited Garrido with a whopping 24 species, all from his native Cuba.