Category: Anoles and Anolologists in the News Page 2 of 6

Before you read the article, name that anole

I’m told that in the old days, all kinds of critters would show up in fruit shipments from tropical regions, but now with pesticides and processing, it’s much rarer. The BBC reports the story of one such recent event:

The reptile, which was about 8ins (20cm) long, was found at Riverford Organic Farms, in Buckfastleigh.

Staff said it was the first lizard they had found since starting to import bananas from the Dominican Republic about a decade ago.

The anolis lizard, which feeds on insects, was sent to Paignton Zoo and is expected to be added to its collection.

Amanda Whittington, from the farm, said the animal had been stored in a container since it was found on Thursday.

She said: “A woman was packing bananas into our fruit boxes and out it popped. It gave her a bit of a shock.

“We then caught it and asked Paignton Zoo what to do.

“It then escaped into the customer services department, but we then managed to catch it again and fed it some crickets.”

‘Certainly a survivor’

She said the bananas took a couple of weeks to transport by boat from the Dominican Republic.

Reptile keeper Rod Keen said: “There are hundreds of species of anolis lizard, which are related to iguanas.

“It is certainly a survivor, as it’s come thousands of miles in various methods of transport and spent time in cool rooms,” a spokesperson added.

The reptile will spend a standard six month period in quarantine at the zoo, and will probably be released into one of the tropical houses.

Paulo Vanzolini

The doyenne of Brazilian herpetology, Paulo Vanzolini died two days ago at an age of 89. Renowned for his herpetological expertise, Vanzolini was even more famous for his samba compositions. Indeed, his Wikipedia page focuses more on his music career and discography than his zoological contributions, an oversight that perhaps Wikipedia-savvy AA readers can rectify.

With regard to anoles, Vanzolini made two important contributions in collaboration with Ernest Williams. The first was their monographic treatment of variation in the mostly-Amazonian Anolis chrysolepis species complex, a group that was recently revised by D’Angiolella et al. This monograph was notable not only for its detailed study of geographic variation, but also for its suggestion that speciation may be prompted by climatic cycles that lead to contraction of populations into isolated, allopatric pockets of suitable habitat. This hypothesis was suggested simultaneously and independently of the same suggestion for Amazonian birds by Haffer and led to the influential and much-debated Pleistocene Refugia hypothesis, discussed previously in AA‘s pages.

Vanzolini and Williams had a follow-up paper that is less well-known, but equally insightful and ahead of its time. In this paper, the authors argued that such refuges might be particularly important foci of adaptive evolution and speciation when they disappear entirely. The argument is that populations might be trapped in refuges and as the habitat continues to deteriorate over time, the populations might have no choice but to adapt or perish. In this way, arguing from the chrysolepis complex as well as from other lizards, dry forest or even grassland species might evolve from wet forest ancestors. This hypothesis could explain the existence of closely-related species occupying very different habitats–the antithesis of what is now known as phylogenetic niche conservatism–and even might explain the parapatric distribution of close relatives if the new species expanded its range (see previous post for more discussion). This idea was published in Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia in 1981 .(download it here) and deserves more attention than it has received.

Collecting data in Mosquito Lagoon. Yoel Stuart manning the helm, with Todd Campbell and Casey Gilman.

Moments ago, AA stalwart Yoel Stuart successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation, entitled Character Displacement and Community Assembly in Anolis Lizards. The four chapters include work on species turnover in island and mainland anoles and eleutherodactylid frogs, which was published last year in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London; a review of the evidence for character displacement, just out in Trends in Ecology and Evolution; and a study on rapid evolution of character displacement, which has been discussed previously in these pages.

Let the celebrating begin! Actually, it already has.

Yoel now moves on to his postdoctoral work in Dan Bolnick‘s lab at the University of Texas in Austin, where he will be studying evolutionary divergence in the Canadian aquatic anole, Gasterosteus aculeatus. Congratulations and good luck, Yoel!

Two days ago, Hobart Smith died at the age of 100. Hobart was among the most prolific herpetologists of all time, with more than 1,500 publications to his name. Included among his publications are several classic monographs such as the Handbook of Lizards (1946) and the Checklist and Key to Amphibians of Mexico (1948). Hobart is the namesake for numerous species of reptiles and amphibians, including Anolis hobartsmithi, an endangered species endemic to the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. May he rest in peace.

Good news and bad news from the good folks at CBS today. Those of you who are Sunday morning TV junkies will know that one of the pearls of the morning is the nature segment–combining beautiful imagery and sound–that comes near the end of the CBS Sunday Morning show. And what was featured this morning? Brown anoles from Tampa, males displaying, females looking regal in their diamondbacks–it was the best Sunday morning nature segment ever…except that the anoles were referred to as geckos!!! Doh! I wonder how long it will take CBS to right this injustice? You can watch the segment at this link, but you have to watch a commercial first. If anyone sees this pop up on Youtube, please let us know and we’ll link straight to it.

Update: See the nice note from the producer at CBS below. Unfortunately, they appear to have taken down the segment from their website.

Fig. 1 from Liner and Cole (2003), where it is also noted that Dessauer’s appearance earned him the nickname “Dr. Sexauer” and invited comparison to “a Greek God.”

Herbert C. Dessauer, whose 1981 report with Dan Shochat on “Comparative immunological study of albumins of Anolis lizards of the Caribbean islands” was among the very first attempts to reconstruct molecular phylogenetic relationships across Anolis, died earlier this month after a brief illnes. For most of his career, Dessauer was professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at LSU’s Medical Center, where he frequently collaborated with scientists at LSU’s Museum of Natural History. In addition to his 1981 classic, Dessauer was an author on numerous reports on molecular genetics of Anolis during the 1970s, often in collaboration with Dan Shochat and George Gorman. These three scientists, together with a handful of others, provided the foundation for modern molecular genetic studies of anoles. The significance of Dessauer’s contributions to anole biology are particularly noteworthy because he built his distinguished career working primarily with other systems. Indeed, Dessauer’s work with anoles doesn’t even warrant mention in a list of his accomplishments that appears in a historical perspective on his career by fellow herpetologists Ernest Liner and Charles Cole.

Nevertheless, Shochat and Dessauer’s results had a range of important implications for anole systematists; for example, they were among the first to convincingly reject reciprocal monophyly of the alpha and beta series diagnosed previously by Etheridge on the basis of morphological variation (and later diagnosed as distinct genera by Savage). Shochat and Dessauer’s results were a topic of debate in the anole phylogenetics community since before they were even published, and featured prominently in the Third Anolis Newsletter from 1977, where Shochat discussed preliminary results and Ernest Williams critiqued this work. Although Willams appreciated Shochat and Dessauer’s efforts, and understood the potential vale of the data they were obtaining, he ultimately concluded by asking”What does the new evidence [from Shochat and Dessauer] explain that the old Etheridgean scheme did not?” and answering “very little” (emphasis in original). In hindsight, I think his critique was unfair. The molecular genetic evidence they provided proved very convincing to many anole biologists of the day and many of the relationships they recovered remain well-supported, including some groups that conflicted with those recovered by previous morphological analyses and favored by Williams in the 1970s.

As I’ve mentioned previously, some biographers believe that Dessauer’s contributions to anole biology barely deserve mention among all of his other accomplishments. In searching the Google Books database for more information on Dessauer’s contributions, you can get sense for the extent of his pioneering influence. In a remembrance of the famous bird systematist Charles Sibley, Alan Brush places Dessauer alongside Sibley and the primate systematist Morris Goodman as the founders of molecular systematics. In his book Parasites and Infectious Disease: Discovery by Serendipity and Otherwise, Gerald Desch relates stories of Dessauer’s early days implementing molecular genetic analyses and teaching to others to do similar work. I didn’t know Herb Dessauer, but given such anecdotes and the remarkable list of collaborative studies he published, it seems clear that he was not only a pioneer, but also a leader, who inspired others and drove them to advance science in new and interesting ways.

In spite of his many accomplishments, I hope that, given how much Dessauer’s work on anoles influenced myself and other anole biologists, that we see it mentioned in the scientific obituaries that are sure to appear in the coming months.