Category: All Posts Page 36 of 146

There have been lots of posts on the many great anole papers and posters at Evolution 2019, but here are a few of the non-scientific anole-related items from the meetings. First, a group of anolologists gathered at Trattoria Zooma on Federal Hill for lunch, where we feasted on Neapolitan specialties. Thanks to Nick Herrmann for picking the restaurant!

Anolologists gathered at Trattoria Zooma on Federal Hill, Providence, RI, for lunch on 24 June 2019.

Left side, front to back: Sofia Prado-Irwin, Todd Jackman, Jonathan Losos, Greg Mayer, Hannah Frank, Ambika Kamath, Ian Wang, Nick Herrmann. Right side, front to back: Ivan Prates, Chris Schneider, Liam Revell, Kevin AvilésRodriguez, Brian Langerhans, Jason Kolbe, Kristin Winchell, Emmanuel D’Agostino.

And, a closer look at Kristin Winchell’s absolutely fabulous Anolis lineatopus dress, which has already been noted.

Kristin also produced a set of attractive anole (pus one boa) stickers, which she was handing out during her poster session.

And finally, huge props to Jonathan Huie. He gave a nice talk on the ecomorphology of mainland anoles, but what I want to highlight here is that he did so under the most dire circumstances: not just afternoon of the last day, but his slides wouldn’t project! The modern equivalent of the old overturned slide carousel, Jonathan handled the absence of his visuals with aplomb, calmly opening his talk and introducing his topic before an empty screen, as technicians scurried to resuscitate the projection system.

When it seemed that the technicians would fail, I decided to document Jonathan’s admirable handling of the situation, but as I brought out and readied my camera, the slides finally appeared, so the photo below shows Jonathan with one of his slides. (Note the technician still at the podium, and that’s Ivan Prates and Kevin de Queiroz in the slide with Jonathan.) It was 5 minutes into his talk before the slides worked– an eternity for a 12 minute talk with 2 minutes for questions. Jonathan’s an undergraduate, but dealt with adversity like a pro!

Anolis distichus is a highly variable species from Hispaniola. It’s especially variable in its dewlap color, ranging from white, to orange, to red. In the past, A. distichus has been broken up into 16 subspecies based on its dewlap variation! Previous work by Rich Glor and his students used genetic data to identify six candidate species, although these six candidate species didn’t correspond well with the 16 dewlap-based subspecies.  In order to get a better handle on how justified these candidate species are, undergraduate Tanner Myers, working with Pietro Longo Hollanda de Mello and Rich Glor, from the University of Kansas, presented a poster titled Identifying species when boundaries are blurred.

Myers collected morphological data from populations of A. distichus from across Hispaniola. The authors expected their morphological data to also partition along with the previously identified genetic candidate species. They found this to not be the case!  When the authors looked at their morphological data (linear body, limb, and head measurements), to see if these 6 candidate species had any morphological divergence, they found no strong pattern. All of the candidate species clustered together to support one morphological group. In the end, the authors suggest that Anolis distichus may represent a highly variable group in in the early stages of speciation, but at this point, they do not support any taxonomic revisions of the species.

Tanner Myers will be starting graduate school with Jamie Oaks at Auburn University in the fall.