Category: New Research Page 45 of 66

Anole Annals dedicated all of last week to a detailed discussion of Nicholson et al.’s new monograph on anole classification, biogeography and ecomode evolution.  Because we had so many interesting posts, our discussion has spilled over into another week.  Some of the previously scheduled posts on biogeography and ecomode will be posted later today or tomorrow.  Check back later today for more discussion of Nicholson et al.’s hypothesized biogeographic scenario and stay tuned throughout the week as we wrap up our discussion of Nicholson et al.’s important monograph.  Remember also that Anole Annals welcomes posts and comments from anyone in the anole biology community about Nicholson et al.’s monograph, or any other topics to anole research.

Below the fold I provide an updated directory of the 18 previous Anole Annals posts pertaining to the Nicholson et al. monograph.

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Nicholson et al. conclude that the ancestral ecomode for anoles was a crown-giant anole, and that anole evolution was characterized by a general movement from up in the trees down toward the ground (e.g., from more arboreal to more terrestrial ecomodes). Unfortunately, even accepting ecomode assignments at face value, methodological flaws render this conclusion unreliable (my previous post discusses problems with the manner in which Nicholson et al. assign species to ecomode categories; for the purposes of this post, I accept the ecomode designations they provided). Two main problems plague the analysis. First, Nicholson et al. fail to estimate uncertainty in their ancestral state reconstructions, now a standard and expected method. Had they done so, they would have found that most nodes deep in the tree cannot be reconstructed confidently as a particular ecomode. Moreover, second, independent of this problem, had  ecomode state of outgroup taxa been correctly categorized, the ancestral ecomode of the anole radiation would not be unambiguously reconstructed as an arboreal species.

Problems with Ancestor Character State Estimation

The field of comparative biology has advanced greatly in the last 20 years, and it is no longer acceptable to simply reconstruct character states using parsimony. The reason is that such reconstructions provide no indication of how much confidence we may place in these reconstructions; indeed, as methods have been developed to estimate error bars around ancestral reconstructions, we have found that in many cases, the uncertainty is enormous, so great that we cannot state with any confidence that the most parsimonious reconstruction is better supported than other possible ancestral character states (see figure below for an example). The reason this occurs is that when we are dealing with traits that are very labile evolutionarily—i.e., that have evolved back-and-forth many times—there is little phylogenetic consistency in those traits, and thus the underlying assumption of ancestral reconstruction, that close relatives are likely to be similar in character state, does not hold.

An example of the uncertainty in ancestor reconstruction. The black dot represents the reconstruction of an ancestral ecomorph on Puerto Rico, inferred by parsimony. This species was inferred to be a generalist, lying between the ecomorphs in morphological space determined by principal component scores. However, when error bars are calculated for the esimtate, it can be seen that the ancestor could have been almost any of the ecomorphs. Figure from Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree, adapted from Schluter et al., (Evolution, 1997).

I discuss this issue at length in Chapter 5 of Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree, which I have excerpted here. Consider this: the most parsimonious reconstruction of ecomorph evolution in Greater Antillean anoles indicates that 19 transitions have occurred from one ecomorph to another. But, can we really strongly prefer a scenario implying 19 transitions from another scenario implying 20, especially if the 20-transition scenario yields very different reconstructions of ancestral states? Although those of a particular philosophical bent may disagree, I would argue that it’s hard to say with a confidence that reconstructions from a 19-transition scenario are much more reliable than reconstructions requiring 20 transitions.

The figure below estimates the likelihood of different ancestor character reconstructions of ecomorph of anoles—you’ll see that when all descendants of a node are the same ecomorph type, then we can have high confidence that the ancestor was that same ecomorph (the pie chart at a node is all one color); however, for most nodes, particularly further down the tree, this is not the case, and multiple ancestral character states are approximately equally likely.

Ancestor reconstruction of ecomorph state for Greater Antillean anoles from Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree. The likelihood that an ancestral node was a particular ecomorph type is represented by the proportion of the circle that is filled by that ecomorph’s color. None of the deeper nodes in the phylogeny can be confidently assigned to a single ecomorph category.

In others words, we can have little confidence in our reconstructions of the ecomorph/ecomode state of early ancestral species (Nicholson et al.’s ecomode designations are the same as previous ecomorph categorizations). Note in particular that not only is the base of the Caribbean anole radiation ambiguous, but that ambiguity results because there is some likelihood that the ancestral species could be trunk-ground, grass-bush or twig, but not trunk-crown or crown-giant. It thus seems extremely unlikely that the the ancestral ecomode node would have been reconstructed unambiguously as a crown-giant.

And, indeed, the Nicholson et al. analysis does not find unequivocal support that the ancestor of the Caribbean radiation was a crown-giant anole. Nicholson et al. state (p.54): “Our analysis indicates multiple equally parsimonious reconstructions of the ecomode of this northern ancestor. However, this uncertainty is derived from a transition from the crown giant ecomode for the ancestor of all anoles to a grass-bush common ancestor of Chamaelinorops, Audantia, Anolis, Ctenonotus, and Norops (hereafter derived anoles; Fig. 29). This transition represents a third major revision of the anole niche from one focused towards the canopy to one focused towards the ground and this transition makes the crown giant and grass-bush ecomodes equally parsimonious reconstructions of the northern ancestor as well as the ancestors of Deiroptyx and Xiphosurus. Because the majority of species of Deiroptyx (53%) and Xiphosurus (67%) included in our analysis have their habitat focused towards the canopy (crown giant, trunk crown, or trunk ecomorph), we suspect that the ancestors of both lineages, as well as the northern ancestor, were crown giants and not grass-bush anoles.”

But this argument is misguided.

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Anolis lividus. Trunk anole? Trunk-ground? Trunk-crown? Photo by Jonathan Losos

Mainland anoles exhibit a great diversity in habitat use and morphology, a topic we have discussed previously on AA. For this reason, an analysis of patterns of evolution in habitat use across all anoles, not just mainland species, would be very welcome. Nicholson et al. step into the breach by presenting habitat categorizations for a large number of mainland species, as well as for most West Indian species, and then analyzing habitat evolution on their preferred phylogeny. Along the way, they coin a new term, “ecomode,” argue that the ecomorph concept is fatally flawed and should be discarded, and present a scenario for patterns of ecological diversification in both mainland and island anoles. Although I applaud the effort to understand ecological evolution in mainland anoles and welcome the attention this paper brings to an important and little-studied question, I find the conclusions unconvincing. In this post, I discuss whether the data are sufficient to create categories of habitat use and confidently assign species to them; in subsequent points I will discuss the analysis of habitat use evolution and Nicholson et al.’s critique of the ecomorph concept.

What is an “ecomode”? The term is not explicitly defined in Nicholson et al., but it appears to refer to different categories of habitat use. The problem with creating such categories and assigning species to them is two-fold. First, most anole species use a variety of different habitats. I like to say that you can find almost any anole anywhere sometimes. More specifically, most anole species use the trunks of trees, often at different heights, and most can be found on the ground occasionally. How, then, do you distinguish a trunk anole from a trunk-ground or a trunk-crown anole, or a trunk-ground from a grass-bush? Second, how can one make sure that a given species fits into a single category? Perhaps some species have a broader niche that encompasses multiple ecomodes, or perhaps a species slices up the environment in an entirely different way (e.g., a trunk-bush or twig-ground species)?

Previous workers (including me) have been able to define ecomorphs and categorize species for two reasons. First, the ecomorph categories are defined not just on the basis of habitat use, but also by reference to morphology and behavior. Indeed, the morphological differences between ecomorphs are quite clear, and they correlate strongly with habitat use and behavior. One may quibble with a few assignments (e.g., is A. opalinus a trunk-crown or trunk anole?), as I discuss in Chapter 3 of Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree, but for the most part, assignment to ecomorph category is clear-cut (including the category of “non-ecomorph” for the minority of West Indian species that fail to meet the morphology/behavior/ecology criteria of any of the ecomorph categories).

The second reason we can make these assignments is because we have quantitative data that can be statistically analyzed. By contrast, the Nicholson et al. assignments are subjective decisions based on a reading of the literature, often relying on short summaries in broad regional reviews such as Savage’s (2002) The Amphibians and Reptiles of Costa Rica and Henderson and Powell’s (2009) Natural History of West Indian Reptiles and Amphibians. Use of these summaries is problematic for two reasons. First, although some mainland species have been studied extensively and quantitatively (e.g., the work of Vitt, Fitch, and Andrews), the habitat use of many species is not well studied. As a result, evaluating some summaries can be difficult because one does not know the extent and quality of the underlying data—in some cases (not Savage or Henderson and Powell), I suspect summary statements are not based on any hard data at all, but just qualitative impressions. In addition, even when species have been studied extensively, going from an encapsulated summary of such studies to an ecomode categorization is often not straightforward. For these reasons, the Nicholson et al.’s assignments of species to specific habitat use categories in many cases may not be reliable.

West Indian Non-Ecomorph Species

I will illustrate these problems by first discussing Nicholson et al.’s treatment of West Indian non-ecomorph species. For these species, there are a number of errors resulting from trying to interpret summary information provided in overview volumes.

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Recent posts on Anole Annals evaluated the taxonomic implications of Nicholson et al.’s [1] new systematics, yet their manuscript included similarly bold interpretations of anole biogeography and the chronology of their diversification.  Nicholson et al. claim that a single genus genus concept for anoles can stifle “scientific communication regarding evolutionary events” and used their new multi-genera taxonomy “to propose a bold hypothesis of the biogeographic history of the family within the constraints of the phylogeny inferred here, the latest known fossils, and a paleogeographic interpretation of the deep history of the West Indies, North America, Mesoamerica, and South America.”  My goal today is to address if their phylogenetic dating analysis is capable of delivering on such claims.

Anoles are characterized by a sparse and poorly understood fossil record.  Any attempt to elucidate the evolutionary history and biogeography of anoles depends on neontological data in the form of DNA sequences from extant species.  Nicholson et al. utilized molecular clock dating methods to hypothesize about the temporal history of anoles.  They calibrated their tree with two amber fossils containing lizards identifiable as anoles.  They attribute the first, Anolis dominicanus, to the clade containing A. aliniger, A. chlorocyanus, A. coelestinus, and A. singularis and assign an age of 23 million years before present (mypb) to this clade.  They use the second second fossil, A. electrum, to calibrate the split between A. limifrons and A. zeus to 28 mybp.  With this background in hand, let’s turn to evaluating their results.

For the sake of a critical evaluation, I have centered the remainder of the post around a three questions I would have asked had I been selected to review this paper during the peer review process.

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I’m posting these remarks at the request of Anole Annals founder Jonathan Losos in light of his suggestion that a proponent of the PhyloCode explain how this system works (with reference to anoles).  As one of the developers of the PhyloCode, as well as a systematic biologist who studies anoles, I guess I’m the logical person to do this.  These issues relate to the recent proposal to “split” Anolis into multiple “genera” following the rules of the Zoological Code (ICZN) in that the PhyloCode (ICPN) describes an alternative system for applying taxon names according to which the very idea of “splitting a genus” has no meaning (hence my use of quotation marks).  The reason is that unlike the Zoological Code, which is based on artificial ranks (e.g., genus, family), the PhyloCode is based on statements about phylogenetic relationships, which means that the PhyloCode ties names directly to clades (monophyletic groups), rather than tying them indirectly and loosely to clades through the intermediary of ranks, as in the case of the Zoological Code.  Clades are evolutionary groups about which scientists can make inferences (regarding properties such as composition, diagnostic characters, and age of origin); they are not things that scientists can “lump” or “split.”  In any case, some of the advantages of the PhyloCode are that names maintain more stable associations with clades, many unnecessary and disruptive name changes that occur under rank-based nomenclature can be avoided, clades can be named one at a time as the evidence permits (rather than requiring large-scale revisions to the taxonomy, many components of which may lack an adequate evidentiary basis), and much more information about phylogenetic relationships can be conveyed (because the system is not artificially constrained by ranks).  In the rest of this post, I’ll illustrate these points using examples involving anoles.

The Fundamental Difference

The fundamental difference between the Zoological Code and the PhyloCode concerns the way in which names are defined in the two systems.  Under the Zoological Code, the name Anolis is effectively defined as follows:  Anolis := [is defined as] the taxon ranked as a genus that contains the species carolinensis.  Now it turns out that no one has defined the name Anolis using the PhyloCode approach, which requires names to be defined explicitly.  The following examples are just two possible ways in which that name could have been defined prior to the proposal to “split” the “genus”:  Anolis := the least inclusive clade containing bimaculatus, lineatus, carolinensis, punctatus, and auratus (some of the species originally included by Daudin) or Anolis := the clade originating in the first ancestor of carolinensis that had adhesive toe pads synapomorphic with those in carolinensis (one of the diagnostic characters originally cited by Daudin).  Note that the PhyloCode style definitions tie the name directly to a clade, while that of the Zoological Code only ties the name to a taxon, which might or might not be a clade, and even if it is a clade, the tie is only indirect through the clade being ranked as a genus.  I also want to point out that PhyloCode methods for applying names are tree-based in that they require phylogenetic trees for determining the limits of the clades to which the names apply.  Although rank-based methods can be applied in the context of trees, they are not inherently tree-based in that first, their implementation doesn’t require trees (taxa can be “erected” however the taxonomist chooses), and second, the names are more strongly tied to artificial ranks (in this case the “genus”) than they are to any of the monophyletic groups (clades) implied by a tree.

Associations between Names and Clades

As a consequence of the indirect (and thus weaker) tie between names and clades under the Zoological Code, names governed by that code do not have stable associations with clades.  This should be obvious from the fact that the name Anolis is associated with a relatively large clade of ca. 385 (currently recognized extant) species according to the current widely accepted taxonomy, but that name is to be associated with a relatively small clade of ca. 44 species according to the proposed “split.”  By contrast, under the PhyloCode, names have more stable associations with clades.  Thus, if we were to adopt either of the phylogenetic definitions of the name Anolis described in the previous section, that name would apply to the same large clade of ca. 385 species under both the phylogeny of Poe (2004: Figs. 1–4), who treated the entire clade as a “genus,” and that of Nicholson et al. (2012: Fig. 4), who propose to “split” the “genus.”  The reason is that the name is defined as referring to a particular clade independent of arbitrary rank assignments (note that the phylogenetic definitions make no references to ranks).  In addition, any changes concerning hypothesized species composition under the PhyloCode can result only from revised phylogenetic inferences (i.e., new scientific results); they cannot result from artificial and non-scientific decisions to change ranks (whether a particular clade is a “genus” is not a scientific hypothesis).  Thus, if we were to adopt either of the phylogenetic definitions of the name Anolis described in the previous section, the phylogenies of both Poe and Nicholson et al. lead unambiguously to the conclusion that Anolis includes the species formerly referred to the “genera” Chamaeleolis, Chamaelinorops, and Phenacosaurus.  But this does not mean that those names must be “synonymized” with Anolis, as they would be under the rank-based Zoological Code.  Instead, the name Chamaeleolis can continue to be applied to the clade of giant twig anoles including Anolis chamaeleonides and it close relatives (rather than adopting the new and cumbersome name “Xiphosurus chamaeleonides species group” of Nicholson et al.).  Similarly, the name Chamaelinorops can continue to be applied to the clade of anoles with certain distinctive vertebral modifications that is currently considered to include only the single extant species Anolis barbouri (rather than applying that name to a larger clade including 8 other species that do not possess those vertebral modifications and were not previously included in Chamaelinorops, as Nicholson et al. were obligated to do by the rank-based Zoological Code when they chose to rank that clade as a “genus”).

Unnecessary and Disruptive Name Changes

We’re just past midway into a week dedicated to discussion on Nicholson et al.’s new monograph on anole classification, biogeography, and ecomode evolution.  We kicked off on Monday with posts about the history and potential future of anole taxonomy.  On Tuesday and Wednesday we had four new posts about the merits of adopting Nicholson et al.’s proposed generic revision.  George Gorman and Jonathan Losos argued in favor of retaining the traditional classification that places all anoles in Anolis.  Todd Jackman and Craig Guyer, meanwhile, provided arguments in favor of dividing anoles among the eight genera proposed by Nicholson et al.  It seems premature to try to summarize the resulting discussion, so I hope readers will take the time to check out the posts and associated comments for themselves.

Remember also that its not too late to contribute to the discussion with posts or comments of your own!  We never censor posts or comments on the basis of scientific content, but remind members of our community of the importance of keeping the discussion civil and scientific.  We’ve post-poned the scheduled posts on time calibration and ecomode evolution to encourage further discussion of the taxonomic issues.

For readers just joining the discussion, I share some links to prior discussions at Anole Annals pertaining to the Nicholson et al. monograph below the fold.

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It is very clear that most people who have posted to the blog site are quite uncomfortable with any proposed change to the concept of one big happy Anolis. What shines through to me in the posts is how deeply emotional the thought of this change is for many of us. I think I understand this emotion and hope to try to persuade you to let go of it by presenting this short story. I did my dissertation on Norops humilis in Costa Rica. The emotional side of me likes to think that, when this scientific name is mentioned in the future, my name and my work will forever be associated with it. Because of that, when Gunther Köhler and Kirsten Nicholson (my very own former student!!!!) wrote a paper demonstrating that I had not performed a dissertation on N. humilis but instead had worked with N. quaggulus, I took the news quite badly. In fact, to this day I struggle with this news because I find it difficult to deal with an emotion that says my work will be lost to the scientific community because of this name change. Obviously, this is totally illogical. The scientific community has been quite resilient to such changes. Classic works on North American Natrix were not lost to careful scientists by a name change to Nerodia. Blair’s work on North American Bufo will continue to be found and cited by anyone working with evolution of Anaxyrus. In the case of my N. humilis work, the thing that has gotten me over the emotional hump is the exciting biology that becomes clear if N. humilis and N. quaggulus are distinct species. Jenn Deitloff, Kirsten Nicholson, and I have been looking for the contact zone between the species I studied at La Selva and the species in Costa Rica that I thought I was studying. We want to determine how two species can maintain separate evolutionary trajectories given that there is no obvious boundary to their dispersal and their dewlaps, at least to my eye, are virtually identical. Köhler’s work seems to indicate that anole biologists have vastly undercounted the real species richness within Norops (and probably the other genera) because some characters, like dewlap color, may operate on a much more subtle level than we have allowed ourselves to consider. If I could have forced the world to succumb to my emotions, I would have, and these anoles would still be one big happy species rather than the several smaller lineages that character data seem to indicate they are. I could cling to N. humilis by pointing to a node on the tree and argue that, because of taxonomic stability, this should continue to be that species so that my La Selva work would maintain its association with that taxon. But, I would miss out on the interesting biology that emerges from simply letting go of that concept.

I see similar advantages to breaking anoles into eight genera. My experiences have caused me to develop a completely different search image for anoles in the genus Dactyloa than I have for those in the genus Norops. In helping to generate the revised taxonomy, I think I learned something interesting about anole ecology, and that is that it may be shaped by an origin of the group in the crowns of canopy rainforest trees in South America followed by a series of biogeographic events that brought them down to the leaf litter. I don’t recall our notions of evolution of anole communities being framed in quite this way. The fossil record and the topology of the phylogenetic tree led us to that insight. Discussions among the authors of the revised classification, during which we forced ourselves to use eight generic names instead of one, helped us gain those insights. We encourage the use of our taxonomy because it helped us see things that we might not have seen and we are confident that this may happen to others. As foundational as Schoener’s studies of one- and two-species islands were (and are – this work certainly shaped my interests), we think it would have been improved had he been forced to recognize those anoles as belonging to the genera Dactyloa and Ctenonotus. We suspect he would have analyzed the sets of islands separately and might have generated discussion among ecologists about degrees of freedom in comparative studies a decade before that discussion actually emerged. We think the taxon-loop vs. character-displacement argument would have been refined had the Dactyloa islands been viewed separately from the Ctenonotus islands. The Dactyloa-islands likely would have been described as fitting most strongly with the taxon loop hypothesis (large ancestors forced to become small with the first small species being doomed to extinction by the next smallest species – or large colonists reaching these islands, leading to the same process) and the Ctenonotus islands likely would have been described as most strongly fitting the character displacement hypothesis (mid-sized ancestors with a niche focused toward the ground diverging to make room for the next mid-sized colonists). We think Losos’ analysis of evolution of ecomorphology of Puerto Rican anoles would have been improved had he been forced to use the genera Deiroptyx and Ctenonotus.

I think the real intent of this blog is expressed in Glor’s posts. In my opinion, he is clearly asking the community of anole systematists to band together as a unified voice against acceptance of the proposed new taxonomy. Obviously, the community of anole systematists has never been of one mind on this topic and I would hope that the community would recoil at the thought that we ever should be. The notion that the world recently came to accept a single large genus Anolis as the only viable concept can be rejected by the observation that some in the community of anole systematists continue to publish under names such as Dactyloa, Norops, and Ctenonotus (e.g. Savage’s book). Given what is happening with so many other large, cumbersome genera, I think it is inevitable that a revised classification of anoles will happen and those who are fighting so hard to prevent it will find their careers intact when they cross that inevitable threshold. Once there, I think they will wonder why they fought so hard against change.

KIRSTEN E. NICHOLSON, BRIAN I. CROTHER, CRAIG GUYER & JAY M. SAVAGE (2012). It is time for a new classification of anoles (Squamata: Dactyloidae) Zootaxa, 3477, 1-108

To some degree, I am playing Devil’s advocate in supporting the split of Anolis – but I do think there are valid arguments that need to be considered.

There are a number of assumptions that, if proven to be false, weaken my argument:

1. As a clade, anoles are older than the KT boundary – 65 million years. The estimates from Nicholson et al. are much older than that, but if you were to choose a date where splitting up vertebrate genera might make sense, 65 million years is not unreasonable. It is likely that coalescent methods will make the estimated age of anoles younger than the 95 million years in the paper, but I’m going to guess older than 65 million years. You may feel that clade ages are irrelevant, but I’m willing to bet that most people would have some age that they would say is too old for any genus (500 million years?)
2. The Alfoldi et al. (2011) tree is pretty accurate and the following aspects of that tree will remain after adding taxa and more data. Starting with the Norops clade or genus (see below for a discussion of why Norops), there are 8 very well supported clades (black dots on the Supplemental figure). There are very short branches between 4 of those groups, representing a rapid radiation such that only 3 of 7 possible inter-group relationships are well supported. Anolis lucius and  A. argenteolis were left in Anolis by Nicholson et al. because A. argenteolis represents the biggest conflict between mtDNA and nuclear DNA and is placed with high confidence with the Anolis clade in Alfodi et al. – I assume that the nuclear tree represents the correct placement of that species.
3. If Anolis is split up, the usage of the word “anole” would increase and refer to all 8 genera to a degree that would minimize workers not knowing that these 8 genera are monophyletic.

One narrative that needs to be considered (see Rich Glor’s excellent post on the history) is that the impetus to split Anolis comes from those who have primarily worked in Central and South America, where the two most disparate (by time) clades of anoles co-exist. If there are non-systematists working on anoles on the mainland it would be useful if they recognized the deep split between two clades of species now in the same genus, especially if clade names fail to be used outside of those whose focus is phylogentic trees. The problem has been that if Dactyloa and Norops are used on the mainland, then a bunch of other generic names are needed for the Caribbean species that fall between the two genera on the tree, with 8 being the minimum number of very well supported groups (again with an assumption that the nuclear DNA framework is robust).  To split Norops further might lose the great story of the reinvasion of the mainland from the Caribbean (Nicholson et al., 2005). From the perspective of those working on the mainland, 8 is a logical minimum number. Given the lack of resolution between the 8 groups, 8 clades is more information than 1 and not much is lost going to 8.

It is important to ask what workers on mainland anoles other than Nicholson et al. think about splitting Anolis. What does Laurie Vitt think, for example?

Another aspect of genera that hasn’t been touched on yet is morphological dissimilarity. Although there is no agreed upon (or necessary) level of dissimilarity needed to recognize a genus, my personal feeling is that if two species are in separate genera, it should not be difficult to tell them apart as species.  I think that this is one reason that I am opposed to the excessive splitting of Bufo and Rana that have been proposed. (To really make this a really good argument, I would need to find some specific cases where the new Frost et al. 2006 genera are difficult to tell apart as species – I’m just assuming that this is true –). In any case, Anolis is not like Bufo – the species are distinct and there is plenty of morphological variation. Long before molecular phylogenies, workers on Anolis, knew (or at least strongly suspected) that ecomorphs were not monophyletic. This does not necessitate splitting Anolis, but it distinguishes it from other cases that may be oversplit.

Unlike others, I don’t think that this fragmentation in usage is necessarily horrible because it will force anyone who works on this clade to consider phylogenetic relationships and to be cautious about applying any methods that blindly consider genera to be equivalent in any way (this includes any meta-analyses of squamates that use genera as a unit of measure).

In conclusion, even if I’m playing devil’s advocate to some degree, I have a real concern about the best way to encourage the use of phylogenetic information outside of research that is focused solely on taxonomy and the phylogenetic history itself.

KIRSTEN E. NICHOLSON, BRIAN I. CROTHER, CRAIG GUYER & JAY M. SAVAGE (2012). It is time for a new classification of anoles (Squamata: Dactyloidae). Zootaxa, 3477, 1-108

Nicholson, K.E., Glor, R.E., Kolbe, J.J., Larson, A., Hedges, S.B. & Losos, J.B. (2005) Mainland colonization by island lizards. Journal of Biogeography, 32, 929–938.

We’ve had a lot of great discussion about Nicholson’s et al.’s proposal to split Anolis into eight genera. To date, most of the commenters have been against the proposal; I’d like to explain why I agree with this majority view.

Anole Annals summarized the arguments for splitting Anolis several days ago. Nicholson et al. argue that the failure to divide Anolis in the past has inhibited evolutionary and systematic research:

“Systematic progress in this regard has been delayed by an extremely conservative taxonomic approach to recognizing the diversity within the group and its extraordinarily ancient historical roots.” (p.4)

“The current practice (following Poe, 2004) of treating all dactyloids as comprising a single genus underemphasizes the evolutionary diversity within the family (as currently recognized) and obfuscates major biological differences among clades. In addition, simply because of the large size of the family (nearly 400 valid species), the single genus concept can be a hindrance to scientific communication regarding evolutionary events and directions of future research.” (p.13)

These quotes suggest that research on anoles is being held back by treating the entire clade as a single genus, but where is the evidence for these claims? No examples are provided. Quite the contrary, research on anoles has flourished over the last several decades, making it a well-known group for the study of many diverse evolutionary phenomena, and much of this work has explicitly incorporated phylogenetic information. Indeed, anole evolution, considered in a phylogenetic context, has become a commonly cited textbook example of adaptive radiation, and work on anoles has become so broad and deep that one commenter at last year’s Evolution meetings noted that “I didn’t go to the Evolution meetings for three years…When I “returned” in 2011 in Norman, it was like everybody had switched to working on anoles and sticklebacks!” The Dobzhansky Prize winners at the last two Evolution meetings have conducted phylogenetically-based research on anoles, and anole workers have nabbed the Fisher Prize and four Young Investigators Prizes at the meetings in that time span. Anole research is going gang-busters, and it is hard to see how retaining the name Anolis for the entire clade has had any sort of detrimental effect. (see also comments by Eric Schaad on why taxonomic names are no longer important for conducting phylogenetically-based evolutionary studies and by Yoel Stuart on why splitting evolutionarily-interesting clades may actually impede research).

I disagree with the proposal to split Anolis into eight genera for two reasons. First, it is not possible for the Linnean classification system to fully represent phylogenetic relationships—splitting genera simply changes the information conveyed, gaining some bits of information and losing others (for more discussion on this point, see the recent post by Luke Mahler and ensuing commentary). Second, splitting Anolis will be extremely disruptive for scientific researchers and the public.

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A half century ago my graduate research was stimulated and influenced by the important unpublished Etheridgean thesis (Etheridge, “1959”, 1960).  As an E.E. Williams student, I was an  adopter, user, and later coiner of informal names for seemingly natural evolutionary groups in the diverse genus Anolis.  In most cases, I was building upon (sometimes tweaking) the foundation of Etheridge’s classification.  I believed then and believe now that the use of informal names for natural groups worked well for communicating evolutionary hypotheses both to specialists in our field, and to a broader audience of professional and amateur biologists who are likely not well informed about the nomenclatural history of these lizards.

Nicholson et al. (2012) believe otherwise. Here is their overview, page 13:

“The role of systematics is to advance our understanding of biological diversity in the natural world. Its practitioners are the guardians of the knowledge produced by past generations and responsible for the rational interpretation of new data and their implications. Within this framework, phylogenetic inference has consequences that we think bind its practitioners to produce a systematic classification of the studied organisms. Such a classification must be founded on the inferred evolutionary relationships and dictated by the canon of monophyly.”

I support that.

This note, then, is neither about the role of systematics, nor the  interpretation of phylogenetic analyses (the Nicholson et al. presentation is comprehensive and extremely valuable).  Rather it concerns their conclusion to the cited paragraph about the use of Anolis, as the generic name for the entire clade. They write:

“the single genus concept can be a hindrance to scientific communication regarding evolutionary events and directions of future research.”

I believe exactly the opposite. Specifically, I believe that the single genus concept enhances scientific communication and suggests directions of future research.

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