Anole biologist Chelsea Connor (Photo courtesy of Chelsea Connor)

Lizard biologist Earyn McGee (Photo courtesy of Earyn McGee)

Right now, the United States is wrestling with systemic racism at many levels in our society. And while one may wish to think nature and science stand outside of this issue, this is not the case. Nature-related jobs and hobbies, which many of us AA readers enjoy, are often not safe spaces for Black people for many reasons—we saw a very striking example of this a few weeks ago in Central Park in New York City. So last week, largely in response to that event, a team of Black scientists presented the world with Black Birders Week, a week of social media and online events to showcase the Black naturalist community and share their experiences with Black and non-Black nature lovers alike. And while the event was focused on birding, two of the organizers behind this event are lizard biologists: Chelsea Connor and Earyn McGee! I’d like to highlight these two awesome herpetologists and their efforts in such a great week of outreach and community-building.

Anole biologist Chelsea Connor (Photo courtesy of Chelsea Connor)

Chelsea Connor, one of the co-founders of Black Birders Week, is currently a student at Midwestern State University. She studies the interactions between two anoles in her home country of Dominica, the endemic A. oculatus and the invasive A. cristatellus (some of her research was recently covered on AA). She’s active on Twitter, where she posts fun facts about her study animals and shares her experience as a Black woman in herpetology – follow her at @chelseaherps. She also makes wonderful anole-themed art–check it out and buy stickers here! 

Earyn McGee is a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona, where she studies the effects of stream drying on lizard communities. She is also a science communicator, educating the public about lizards and showing that Black women belong in wildlife science. She has run a weekly social media #FindThatLizard challenge for several years, introducing the fun of herpetology to many new fans (you can follow her on Twitter @Afro_Herper to play, and support this effort on her Patreon). She also has a new YouTube channel!

Lizard biologist Earyn McGee (Photo courtesy of Earyn McGee)

If you missed the #BlackBirdersWeek event, I encourage you to look it up on social media and online – it’s received lots of press coverage! To get you started, I’m pasting a few articles highlighting Earyn’s and Chelsea’s involvement in Black Birders Week below. And I encourage us all to use this moment to reflect on how we can make our nature-loving communities more welcoming and safe for our fellow naturalists.

• Audubon: ‘Black Birders Week’ Promotes Diversity and Takes on Racism in the Outdoors
• NPR Shortwave: #BlackBirdersWeek Seeks To Make The Great Outdoors Open To All
• VOA News: Black Birdwatchers Face Racism Too
• Smithsonian Conservation Commons: #BlackBirdersWeek: Celebrating and Encouraging Diversity in Conservation

Melissa Kemp with a Puerto Rican crown-giant anole (Anolis cuvieri). Photo by Melissa Kemp

From the pages of Nova:

BY ALISSA GREENBERG WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 2020 NOVA NEXT

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.

AG: You mentioned 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.

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.

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?

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.

Introduced brown anoles were washed in with Hurricane Harvey nearly three years ago to my yard near downtown Houston. The yard had established green anoles. Now I see the two species interacting. Here’s an example of two males interacting on my azalea bush in the front yard.

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?

Those of you in the anole-know will recall that A. lineatus is distinctive as being the only anole in which the two sides of the dewlap are different.

h/t George Gorman

Paper Money

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.

Anolis fuscoauratus. Photo by Roberto Langstroth

New literature alert!

In Journal of Helminthology
Helminths associated with Norops fuscoauratus (Squamata, Dactyloidae) in highland marshes of the Brazilian semi-arid
J.M. dos Santos Mesquita, S.S. de Oliveira, R. Perez, R.W. Ávila

Summary

Helminthological studies may contribute with valuable information on host biology and conservation. Herein, we provide new data on helminths infecting the lizard Norops fuscoauratus, testing one of the factors considered most important in parasitic ecology: host size. We analysed 25 specimens of N. fuscoauratus from three highland marshes in the Brazilian semi-arid. Eight taxa of helminths belonging to Nematoda, Trematoda and Acanthocephala were found. Physaloptera sp. showed the higher prevalence (40%), with a mean intensity of infection of 3.3 ± 1.46 (1–16) and mean abundance 1.32 ± 0.65 (0–16). Norops fuscoauratus represents four new host records for the helminths Cyrtosomum sp., Pharyngodon travassosi, Strongyloides sp. and Centrorhynchus sp. There is no relationship of host body size (P = 0.79) and mass (P = 0.50) with parasite richness. In addition, the present study contributes to the knowledge of the parasitic fauna of N. fuscoauratus and the Neotropical region.

Read the full paper here!

Anolis marcanoi. Photo by Rich Glor

reprinted from Dominican Today

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 ).

You can see images of species of Dominican flora that is critically endangered in the following gallery: https://listindiario.com/la-vida/2017/08/03/476648/galeria-de-la-flora-dominicana

AND ANIMALS?

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.”

By Lelani Del Pinto & Samuel Fisher 

Southern California has remained relatively unaffected by invasive reptiles for the past few decades. While there have been few invasive species noted, Californians use of citizen science tools has made it easier to detect novel invasive species.  One source of invasive species passage is plant nurseries. Multiple sources studying invasive species across the world have noted they have played a major role in various A. sagrei invasions.

At our sites we found plant nurseries at three out of the five survey locations. Anolis sagrei was first detected during an invasive lizard survey in which we (Lelani Del Pinto and Samuel Fisher) were determining the spread of parthenogenetic whiptails (Aspidoscelis sonorae) from Arizona, when we stumbled upon the unexpected A. sagrei population.  A new survey began immediately among a tiny strip mall and not one but approximately 30 A. sagrei were seen.

With a new mission in hand, we next turned to iNaturalist which showed a few scattered records of A. sagrei across Orange County. None of the citizen records were from the strip mall at which we conducted our first survey. Doing a literature search, we found one short note about A. sagrei in California, but no other publications for the state. We established five separate sites based on iNaturalist records as well as the other population we found. After that we surveyed all of the sites and accounted for all of the lizard species seen.

Each site with citizen records proved to have at least a couple of hectares of invaded A. sagrei land. Our methodology was focused on trying to understand the total distance the separate A. sagrei populations had spread; by trying to create a minimum convex polygon, we hoped to get an idea about the minimum size of each of these disjunct populations.

As we were already keeping track of all lizard species we found, we quickly noticed a somewhat problematic trend. It seemed that in localities where A. sagrei was present, the native Sceloporus occidentalis was nowhere to be found. Due to the lack of presence of S. occidentalis in the surveyed sites in which A. sagrei was observed, we think there is reason to pursue further surveying to ensure our native western fence lizard is not threatened by this invader.

While the full extent of the invasion is yet to be determined, further studies could prove the issue is more problematic than anticipated, especially if more A. sagrei come into California and eventually establish through the help of the nursery trade. Secondly any downstream effects caused by invasive A. sagrei should be closely watched because extirpations of S. occidentalis may prove troublesome. Sceloporus occidentalis is known to have an important role in our ecosystem and reduces lyme disease.

The results of our study help to show that within southern California, A. sagrei has the potential to become an invader as it has in many other places such as Florida, Hawaii, and Texas. The impact of the potential A. sagrei invasion in southern California will hopefully be further studied and handled appropriately.  We hope you check our paper out to learn the details about where brown anoles have recently spread!

References                                

Fisher SR, Del Pinto LA, Fisher RN. 2020. Establishment of brown anoles (Anolis sagrei) across a southern California county and potential interactions with a native lizard species. PeerJ 8:e8937 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8937

Mahrdt CR, Ervin EL, Nafis G. 2014. Geographic distribution: Anolis sagrei (Cuban Brown Anole). Herpetological Review 45:658–659.

Communicating anole science to the public recently reached dizzy new heights as anoles were immortalized in a New York Times cartoon!

“Scientists studying lizards in the Americas found that populations in regions battered by hurricanes have larger toe pads that help them hang on in high wind. It’s proof that extreme weather events can alter the course of a species.” Artist: James Yang

The cartoon was published in relation to a recent study in PNAS investigating how hurricanes may drive the evolution of anole toepads by Colin Donihue et al.