Category: Anoles and Anolologists in the News Page 1 of 6

Green Fruit Loop, the salad anole of Princeton, NJ

We’ve previously reported on anoles finding their way into commercial produce, with happy and not so happy outcomes. Count this story from Princeton, New Jersey as one of the happy ones…

A kindergartener at Riverside Elementary found this juvenile Anolis carolinensis in a bundle of lettuce that had been stored in the family refrigerator for three days. Although initially listless, the animal recovered quickly and now seems to be doing just fine living with her reptile enthusiast science teacher. The new class pet was named Green Fruit Loop and will hopefully serve as an anole ambassador at Riverside for years to come.

From the New York Times, November, 19th

Who’s hands are those in the Times?

Research that is revealing the surprising cognitive abilities of reptiles is featured in the Science Times in tomorrow’s (Nov. 19) New York Times. And not surprising to AA readers, the work of Manuel Leal on the problem-solving ability of Anolis evermanni is prominently reviewed, a topic we have discussed several times in these pages [1,2]. The article contains a nice discussion of Leal’s work, as well as several photographs and a brief appearance (of lizard, not Leal) in the accompanying video (fast forward to the 2:20 mark).

The article also discusses research on tortoises showing they can work their way through mazes, using several different approaches, to find food, and on monitor lizards that can figure out how to open a door on a tube to access mice within.

If you work on Anolis lizards, there’s a good chance you’ve been asked about the recent rediscovery of the long-thought-to-be-extinct “Pinocchio Anole” within the last week. As Anole Annals reported on October 7, this story has hit the big time. After being featured on the Huffington Post, the tale of this rediscovery went viral, receiving extensive news coverage worldwide.

The catch, as most Anole Annals readers are doubtless aware, is that the Pinocchio Anole wasn’t just recently rediscovered. It was rediscovered in 2005, and has since been the subject of field studies resulting in no fewer than five published works (six if you count “Finding Anolis proboscis,” Steve Poe’s 2010 Anolis Newsletter article about finding Anolis proboscis).

What gives? How can the central claim of such a major scientific news item be fundamentally incorrect?

I propose the following hypothesis: This story evolved to its current state by good old-fashioned natural selection. I think that an initially accurate web story was repeatedly and imperfectly replicated, and that as the story was picked up by increasingly larger news outlets, important details were lost or altered during transcription (perhaps selectively, since discovery makes good copy), resulting in the evolution of an incorrect news item.

If I have things right (it’s possible I don’t know all the details), the story started with an informational advertisement from the ecotourism company Destination Ecuador.

If you read that article, it’s pretty accurate with the potential exception of a single use of the word “re-discovery” to describe the event during which the Tropical Herping team found Anolis proboscis. The use of that word is admittedly a little strange and perhaps a bit unwise, but the article makes it very clear that the actual rediscovery of the species took place in 2005, and describes a successful scientific expedition to study the species in the wild in 2010. To me the point of this article is “with our ecotourism company, you can have a chance to travel with experts to see a weird, rare, recently-rediscovered lizard species.”

Next comes an article by Douglas Main on livescience.com, which appears to be the original source of the viral news item. If you read the LiveScience article, it’s worded in a way that tells a narrative of very recent rediscovery (which is not really true) without ever explicitly stating it.

Read More

Ray Huey and friends at last year’s World Herpetological Congress in Vancouver

Learn about Ray’s storied past.

Ray Huey has been a pioneer in the field of physiological ecology and evolution. Building on the work of Ruibal, Rand,Williams and others (as he always stresses), Ray was instrumental in making anoles a model for understanding thermal biology, integrating behavior, physiology, evolution and,  most recently, conservation biology. And then there’s Ray’s other side. Who else could get away with using a Rolling Stone‘s album in the title of a paper?

A symposium in Ray’s honor will be held in Seattle on Friday, October 4th and is open to anyone, but attendance is limited, so register today. All the details are available on the fest’s website. Whether you attend or not, check out the Hueyblog and add your own tributes and reminiscences.

Ken Miyata’s handiwork on display outside David Wake’s office

Recently, a chapter of Ken Miyata’s thesis on the ecology of Ecuadorian anoles was published in the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, along with remembrances of Ken–who died 30 years ago–by Jerry Coyne, Chuck Crumly, Ray Huey, Eric Larson, Greg Mayer, and B Wu.

David Wake knew Ken Miyata, too, and here’s what he had to say: “Ken did an undergraduate honor’s thesis with me in MVZ.  He was far ahead of his time — we had no digital database but he wanted to do detailed mapping of some species so he selected Batrachoseps attenuatus and then laboriously went through the large MVZ collection.  He made a pin for each locality and on the pin recorded the MVZ catalogue number (or first in a series in the case of multiple specimens). Then he researched the exact locality, often going to field notes.  The result is still on the wall outside my office!  From time to time someone suggests taking it down, but it has now gained the status of historical document!  And it is a constant reminder to me of Ken and his enthusiasms and diligence.”

La Jornada en Linea just published an article on a new Mexican amber anole with information provided by paleontologist Francisco Riquelme. As discussed previously in AA‘s pages, this is only the second anole in amber from anywhere other than the Dominican Republic, the first, Anolis electrum, having been described by Skip Lazell in 1965. That specimen is very incomplete such that little can be said about its taxonomy or lifestyle. It will be interesting to learn more about this one.