Category: Scientist Profiles Page 1 of 2

Where do you work and what do you do?

 I am currently a graduate student at the University of Michigan, but I conduct most of my research in the tropics of Central and South America. I am broadly interested in trying to answer the question of how to explain patterns of phenotypic diversity found in nature, especially in the context of color and signaling. In other words, why do organisms look the way they do – why do they have certain colors over others, and what sort of information are they conveying by showing off those colors? When not focusing on my research, I spend virtually all of my free time photographing as many animals as I can find, as well as spending countless hours sorting said photos into their respective taxonomic groups. What can I say, I’m a biodiversity nerd!

What aspects of anole biology do you study, and what have you learned? 

I study the evolution of color in anole dewlaps. Even with over 400 species, all anoles possess this extendable throat fan, and it’s often brightly colored. Although we have some understanding of how the dewlap functions as a signal (e.g., species recognition, competitive interactions, courtship, predator avoidance/deterrence), it remains unclear why there are so many different colors of dewlaps. To try to tackle this question, I am looking at how the evolution of these colors may be influenced by the light environment. Since the reproduction and/or survival of an anole can depend on whether its dewlap is serving as an efficient signal, it’s easy to see how the light environment might determine which colors are favored by selection. For instance, a bright orange dewlap would likely show up much better than a dull green one under the dense canopy of the rainforest, just as a pitch-black dewlap would probably be an excellent signal in a bright, open field. I am testing this idea using an experimental island study in the Panama Canal. My study species is the Panamanian slender anole, males of which can have a mostly orange dewlap or a mostly white dewlap. By introducing these lizards onto a multitude of very tiny, highly variable islands in the canal, I can test which color will “win out” over time in different light environments. 

How and why did you start studying anoles? 

 I have loved reptiles since I was a child, so it was by no coincidence that the very first lab I worked in as an undergraduate had a breeding colony of anoles. While there, I studied physiology and metabolic rates. While I can say that metabolism work is not for me (shout out to the scientists who love it!), I very much enjoyed taking care of and working with the anoles, so I decided to stick with them throughout my undergraduate and graduate career.

What do you love most about studying anoles? 

 As someone interested in color, I think that dewlaps are anoles’ coolest feature. I love studying anoles and their dewlaps because I am constantly amazed by the astounding amount of diversity in this little flap of skin. In addition, as a researcher, it’s hard to complain about the incredibly high abundance and ease of capture for many of these species.

What is your favorite anole species? 

My favorite anole species would have to be the Meyer’s anole, Anolis johnmeyeri (named after the scientist, not the singer). This species, found in Honduras, has an absolutely gorgeous dewlap in both males and females. While large, colorful dewlaps are possessed exclusively by males in many anole species, female Meyer’s anoles have a dewlap that’s almost as large and equally as beautiful. Female dewlaps are bright yellow with a brilliant blue spot, and male dewlaps are bright red with the same blue spot. 

Where can people learn more about you and follow you online? 

Website: www.colorinnature.org

Instagram: @johndavidcurlis

Where do you work and what do you do?  

 I’m a retired Associate Professor at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, FL. While at FSC from 2007 through 2016, I conducted research and taught courses in animal behavior, zoology, evolution, and ecology, as well as a capstone course in undergraduate research. I also took students to Jamaica and Bermuda to conduct field research on anoles.

What aspects of anole biology do you study, and what have you learned? 

 I’ve worked mainly on the production and perception of color and motion displays. Most of this research has been conducted collaboratively with my colleague Dave Clark and has been experimental in nature, e.g., video playbacks and anole robots. Leo Fleishman’s work on Anolis sensory ecology has been a major influence on my thinking about how lizards perceive their color displays. I’ve learned that working on anole behavior can be challenging and that, in fact, most experiments fail! But I’ve also learned that it is well worth the effort in the end.

How and why did you start studying anoles? 

 When I was a kid growing up in the 1950’s and 1960’s in central Pennsylvania, individual Anolis carolinensis used to be sold at the circus in little “animal cracker” boxes. I still remember bringing one home. My father built a small cage for it and tirelessly caught insects for it. Much later, as a postdoc at U.C. Davis in 1992, I was reintroduced to magic of anoles by none other than Jonathan Losos. At that time, Jonathan was a postdoc with Tom Schoener and heard about the video playback work that we were doing in Peter Marler’s Lab. Jonathan was interested in figuring out two things: First, would anoles respond to video recordings of other anoles displaying? And second, if they did respond to video, could anoles discriminate conspecific from heterospecific displays? With our Marler Lab colleague Chris Evans, we showed that A. marcanoi males spent more time displaying in synchrony with video clips of conspecific male displays than heterospecific male (A. cybotes) displays. Soon after that, Judy Stamps and I conducted an even more successful video playback experiment on species recognition, in which we used Anolis grahami from Jamaica as subjects.

What do you love most about studying anoles? 

 What’s not to love? I recall Chris Evans calling them “magnificent beasts”, as well as Duncan Irschick referring to them as “mini gods”. Anoles are endlessly fascinating, and you could never run out of species to research.

What is your favorite anole species? 

 Regarding species that I’ve worked with personally, Anolis grahami is probably my favorite. They are reliable performers in behavioral experiments and are always up to the challenge of responding to another anole (or a video of one, or an anole robot!). There are two runners up, however. Anolis conspersus with its blue dewlap (actually a UV-reflecting dewlap whose wavelengths extend into the blue range) is quite photogenic, as a number of contributors to Anole Annals have noted. The other runner up would be Anolis extremus. Their complex color pattern is exceptional, and although they are frustratingly squirrelly to approach in the field, male tail lifting contests can be spectacular. Anolis extremus really are extreme!

Where can people learn more about you and follow you online? 

Website: www.macedonialab.com

Where do you work and what do you do?  

I am an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Binghamton University, State University of New York. I am also the Associate Director of Research of the Amazon Conservatory for Tropical Studies, outside Iquitos, Peru. My research group studies ecology at the organismal level, with a focus on behavior and herpetology. I primarily conduct fieldwork in Costa Rica and Peru. At the university, I teach courses in animal behavior and ecology, and I am involved with initiatives to promote underrepresented students in biology. I was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University and received my PhD in Ecology from Penn State in 2013.

What aspects of anole biology do you study, and what have you learned? 

 My background in behavioral ecology first nudged my interest in anoles towards communication and reproductive behavior. I have a particular interest in understanding how sexual signals function and evolve. My group studies anole dewlaps and their costs and benefits. The use of color and patterns, both on the dewlap and the entire body, is also a focus in my group. We use both observational and experimental techniques to better understand how anoles use sexual coloration and behavioral displays to maximize fitness. We’ve found that there are some significant risks posed by bearing conspicuous sexual signals, and that there is a variety of ways in which body color can be used plastically to benefit anoles.

Our work is based on natural history observations, and so we tend to follow where the anoles lead. Lately, that has led us down the path of examining their antipredator adaptations. We are investigating the fascinating underwater diving and rebreathing behaviors of the semi-aquatic anoles, from ecological and physiological perspectives. We documented that some semi-aquatic anole species spend considerable time underwater when pursued. Our interest in antipredator strategies includes a focus on the mechanics of escaping predators, whether that is by swimming, diving, running, or leaping. Semi-aquatic anoles are also remarkably cold tolerant and have very low body temperatures, and so we also investigate their thermal ecology and possible effects of climate change. 

How and why did you start studying anoles? 

 Allergies, initially! I kept anoles as pets almost my entire childhood because a cat or dog was out of the question. Back then, I spent an embarrassing number of hours just watching what anoles did in their tanks. This cemented anoles in my head as the coolest possible lizards Years later, after spending all of my research life studying other cool herps, I stumbled upon anoles again on a teaching trip to Costa Rica. From the moment I saw Anolis aquaticus in the streams, they completely captured my attention. Their habitat and behaviors were so unique from what I had learned about anoles, I knew I had to make them a priority.

What do you love most about studying anoles? 

Two things. Their remarkable adaptations – how evolution has so astoundingly shaped them to particular environments. I love how much is known, but also how much is still unknown about their morphological, physiological, and behavioral traits – I love the element of surprise! Second, I’m still fascinated by simply watching their interactions with one another, which I could do for hours. 

What is your favorite anole species? 

 I absolutely have a favorite – Anolis aquaticus. They’re such quirky representatives of the mere handful of semi-aquatic anoles out there.

Where can people learn more about you and follow you online? 

Website: www.lindseyswierk.com

Twitter: @LindseySwierk

Instagram: lindseyswierk

Where do you work and what do you do?  

 I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Genetics at the University of Georgia. I am doing my thesis research in the lab of Dr. Doug Menke. My research is focused on studying how genes are regulated to build parts of the body during embryonic development, and how changes during embryogenesis can lead to the evolution of novel forms and structures.

What aspects of anole biology do you study, and what have you learned? 

 I am studying the genetic and developmental processes underlying the morphology of limbs in anoles. Although the ecology and evolution of these lizards has been extensively studied, we know relatively little about the underlying mechanisms that have contributed to the evolution of different structures within this genus. One of the most apparent differences among anole species is limb size, which is adapted for the particular microhabitat that each species resides within. Differences observed in adult limb lengths between several species of anoles seem to be due to changes that occur early in embryonic development. I’ve learned that since the genes and signaling pathways underlying limb development are highly conserved, changes in gene regulation may underlie many of the differences in limb morphology observed between species. My current work is focused on comparing DNA sequences in the genomes of different species to find regions involved in regulating genes important for the development and evolution of limb morphology.

How and why did you start studying anoles? 

When I first joined the Menke lab at UGA, our efforts were transitioning into more studies in anoles. I instantly fell in love with the brown anole as a model organism for studies of evolutionary developmental (evo-dev) biology.

What do you love most about studying anoles? 

 For the past few decades, studies of gene function in reptiles have lagged behind other major vertebrate groups. I enjoy being able to contribute to establishing the brown anole as an emerging model organism to investigate the genetic and molecular mechanisms of evolution in reptiles. I am also happy to get out of the lab every once in a while to catch anoles and bring them back for us to study!

What is your favorite anole species? 

 Tough to choose of course, but Anolis grahami is one of my favorites because of its striking colors of greens and blues. 

Where can people learn more about you and follow you online? 

Website: aaronevodevo.wixsite.com/aaronevodevo

Twitter: @aaronevodevo

Instagram: @aaronevodevo

Where do you work and what do you do?

 I work at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. I teach courses on evolution and vertebrate biology, and I lead a lab of undergraduate scientists studying lizard behavior and physiology. We combine approaches from ecology, evolution, and neuroscience to understand how and why lizards behave the way they do.

What aspects of anole biology do you study, and what have you learned? 

 One of the main areas of my research is the evolution of behavioral mechanisms, and we generally focus on how muscles allow different species to behave in different ways.  A surprising result from this work has been that anole species that use a muscle frequently don’t usually have larger muscles than species that use the muscle rarely. Instead, we found that muscles that move bigger structures are bigger than muscles that move smaller structures, no matter how often the muscle is used. This highlights how different lizard muscles seem to be from muscles in mammals and birds.

Another aspect of our work focuses on how a lizard’s social and physical environment affects how it behaves. We’ve studied why green anoles change their body color, how anoles communicate to form a social hierarchy, how anoles respond to artificial light at night, and many other questions. 

How and why did you start studying anoles? 

 In college, I became fascinated with studying evolution on islands, because I thought islands were where the most exciting evolutionary stories were being discovered. I had never studied anoles before graduate school, but since I joined Jonathan Losos’ lab as a PhD student, they’ve been the focus of almost all my research.

What do you love most about studying anoles? 

 As a behavioral ecologist, my favorite part of studying anoles is watching what they do in the field. I’ve found that observing a single lizard for an hour can often lead to surprising findings, and by combining lots of those observations, we can get a rich understanding of how lizards interact with each other.

What is your favorite anole species? 

 My favorite anole is Anolis bahorucoensis, a lizard that lives in montane forests in the Dominican Republic. They have tiny dewlaps, but their bodies are so vibrantly colored – green and blue and black and yellow and orange.

Where can people learn more about you and follow you online? 

Lab Website: www.johnsonlizardlab.org

Outreach Website: www.lizardsandfriends.org

Twitter: @LizardMichele

Where do you work and what do you do?

I currently work at the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California Berkeley as a postdoctoral fellow. I study a diversity of topics in behavioral and evolutionary ecology, including the collective behavior of social spiders and tent caterpillars, the intersections of behavioral ecology with the social sciences, and the socioecological consequences of individual variation in Anolis lizards. Prior to this, I did my Ph.D. in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, and was a postdoc at the University of California Santa Barbara.

What aspects of anole biology do you study, and what have you learned?

I study two aspects of Anolis biology—individual variation in habitat use, and individuals’ movement patterns in the context of mating systems, with the goal of building a nuanced understanding the microevolutionary processes of natural and sexual selection in these animals. I have learned that the actual lives of Anolis lizards—their daily ecological and social interactions—are much more dynamic and complex than previously expected. When viewed in the light of well-established patterns of adaptation and diversification across populations and species of anoles, this messiness becomes particularly fascinating—it prompts us to ask what processes govern the emergence of population-level and species-level patterns over longer timescales from organisms’ daily lives.

How and why did you start studying anoles?

I began studying anoles in 2009, as an undergraduate field assistant for Yoel Stuart and Alexis Harrison. I was initially fascinated by the questions about rapid adaptive evolution that could be asked in anoles, but very soon came to love the animals themselves!

What do you love most about studying anoles?

I love watching anoles! I find their behaviour endlessly entertaining, but also tractable enough to study fruitfully. I also love the challenge of catching them. And finally, anole researchers are a fantastic group of scientists, and I feel lucky to be part of the crew.

What is your favorite anole species?

I’d have to say Anolis sagrei. They’re robust, widespread, and really fun to watch.

Where can people learn more about you and follow you online?

I’m on Twitter at @ambikamath, and my website is ambikamath.wordpress.com.

Where do you work and what do you do? 

I live in Los Angeles, CA where I am an Assistant Professor of evolutionary biology at UCLA. I spend most of my time studying how species around the globe evolve and adapt in response to climate change and human disturbance. I use a wide variety of tools in this work, including genetics, physiology and climate modeling. When I’m not researching, I spend time creating and hosting  The Biology of Superheroes Podcast, where my co-host and I nerd out about the science of comic books, movies, TV shows and other science fiction.

What aspects of anole biology do you study, and what have you learned? 

 I study how anoles adapt and acclimate to changes in temperature. Temperature is a universal stress for all life on the planet and can have dramatic impacts on how species live, from how fast they can run to how well the proteins in their cells perform. Reptiles and other cold blooded animals are great to explore thermal biology because they can’t make their own body heat. This means that their behavior and performance are really tightly linked to environmental temperatures. The most surprising thing I’ve learned in my work is just how fast anoles can respond to shifting temperatures. We can see the signatures of this response over very short timeframes in response to extreme weather events and the high temperatures in cities, even within a single year.

How and why did you start studying anoles? 

I grew up in South Carolina, so anoles were some of the first animals I ever interacted with as a child. As a matter of fact, the anole that I studied in graduate school, the green anole, was the very first animal I ever caught as a kid. Most anoles are pretty small, but I think they have a ton of personality. 

What do you love most about studying anoles? 

Anoles seem to find remarkable ways of dealing with environmental change, which makes them very fun to study. They’ve found pretty interesting ways to deal with hurricanes, winter storms, city life and other extreme environments. What most interesting is that we can see how they respond in real-time. This gives us really interesting insights into how life finds its way on our planet despite the many challenges it can be faced with, including us. 

What is your favorite anole species? 

I’m probably the outlier among most anole biologists, because I love the green anole. It’s not a fancy as many other species, but it just has a special place in my heart at a southern boy. Plus, it’s given me great opportunities to learn about evolution and the biological impacts of humans on the planet. 

Where can people learn more about you and follow you online?

You can find information about my work at  https://socgen.ucla.edu/people/shane-campbell-staton/ and on Twitter @Scampbellstaton.

You can also find my podcast - The Biology of Superheroes Podcast - on iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. 

Where do you work and what do you do? 

I’m a biologist and environmental scientist at Princeton University in New Jersey. I lead a research group that tries to understand how the complex web of interactions between different species—including humans—shapes the world around us. My group does a lot of work in Africa, but we also work in the Caribbean, on anoles.

What aspects of anole biology do you study, and what have you learned? 

In 2011, I started a long-term experiment in the Bahamas, aiming to understand how predators influence the ability of different anole species to coexist on islands. We find that in the presence of predators, anoles alter their behavior to reduce their likelihood of being eaten. This can alter the competitive relationships between different anole species—the remarkable ‘niche partitioning’ of anoles, with different species are specialized to live in different parts of the habitat, becomes disrupted. Competition becomes more intense, which can reduce the likelihood of multiple anole species being able to coexist. We are continuing to follow this experiment to learn about both the ecological and evolutionary consequences of introducing predators onto islands. 

How and why did you start studying anoles?

I started studying anoles when I had a pet green anole as a kid in North Carolina. I was particularly interested in figuring out what kinds of foods it would eat, so that I could keep it alive, which I did by experimenting with different insects that I caught outside. I found that my pet anole really liked to eat beetle larvae that I collected from rotting acorns. These days, my lab studies anole diets using a technique known as DNA metabarcoding, wherein we sequence the insect DNA in anole fecal samples and use those DNA sequences to identify the insect species that the anoles have been eating. 

What do you love most about studying anoles? 

What I love most about anoles is that they provide a beautiful opportunity to study some of the most important unsolved mysteries in ecology and evolutionary biology. How does biological diversity arise? How is it maintained? What are the mechanisms by which different species manage to coexist in the same place, despite competition? These questions are relevant to understanding all of life on Earth, and anoles provide a perfect ‘model system’ for studying them using creative experiments in both the field and the laboratory. But they’re also cute and charismatic—and sometimes hilarious—and its hard not to love that. 

What is your favorite anole species? 

Anolis smaragdinus, the Bahamian green anole. Not only is it a stately lizard, it’s also the underdog in our experiment, so I’m always pulling for it to thrive. 

Where can people learn more about you and follow you online? 

Website: https://pringle.princeton.edu — Twitter: @rob_pringle – Instagram: @pringletons 

Where do you work and what do you do?  

I live in Austin, Texas, where I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin. From 2015 – 2018 I was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, and I received my PhD in Biology from Stanford University in 2015. 

What aspects of anole biology do you study, and what have you learned? 

I am broadly interested in using the fossil record to understand how species are impacted by past instances of environmental perturbations, such as climate change, seal-level fluctuations, and human colonization. By understanding how different organisms responded to environmental change, I can make predictions about which species may thrive and which species may be threatened under current and future instances of environmental change.  

I apply this broad framework to ancient lizard communities in the Caribbean, where anoles are key players. I’ve learned that compared to other lizard species that also occur in the Caribbean, like the curly-tails (Leiocephalus), anoles are very resilient when facing environmental changes. They have a significantly lower rate of extinction than other Caribbean lizards, and I have documented cases where their abundances increase substantially after the extinction of other lizard species in their community. I have also learned that the distributional ranges of different anole species have changed over time, and I am in the process of determining if those range shifts coincide with changes in the environment, such as forest cover. 

To accomplish this, I spend a lot of time in the field and in museum collections. I conduct paleontological excavations in search of new fossil deposits on islands such as Puerto Rico and Marie-Galante (a small overseas French territory in the Lesser Antilles). These fossils are pretty young by paleontological standards (typically 30,000 years old or younger) but they are great for the Caribbean, where fossil deposits are rare due to the hot, humid, weather that prevents fossil preservation. What is also great about this time period is that the environmental changes that took place more closely reflect ongoing environmental changes, and many of these sites document the arrival of indigenous and European human populations into the Caribbean, so we can see what communities looked like before humans arrived and also afterwards. In the museum, I use previously collected modern specimens of anoles to help identify the fossils I find in the field, and I also utilize previously collected fossils from different paleontological site in order to compare ecological and evolutionary patterns across space and time. 

How and why did you start studying anoles? 

Although I had known that I wanted to be a researcher for quite some time growing up, I never thought that I would be studying anoles! I came into graduate school with a background in paleontology, phylogeography, and island biogeography. I had experience with herps (amphibians and reptiles), but I did not consider myself a herpetologist. All I really wanted to do was synthesize my passions for paleontology and conservation with my interests in molecular biology and evolutionary ecology. Right before I started graduate school at Stanford, Dr. Joan Roughgarden gave my PhD advisor some anole paleontological samples. Because of my interests and background, we though that these materials would be perfect for addressing the research questions that I wanted to tackle, and boy were we right! Additionally, those materials opened my eyes to a whole new world of research that I had not encountered before.   

What do you love most about studying anoles? 

I love that anoles are amenable to studying a diversity of biological questions! Anole research runs the gamut from behavioral, physiological, phylogenetic, developmental, genomic, to ecological and beyond. As a result, there is a rich literature on anoles that helps to contextualize the research that people like me want to do. Despite all of this knowledge, there is still so much that we don’t know, too. Anoles are also very charismatic to watch in the field and the people who study anoles are a great group. It helps to be in a supportive, intellectually diverse, and curious research community. The anole research community, which spans the globe, is that and more! 

What is your favorite anole species? 

This is a tough question because there are so many anoles out there! I spent a lot of time working on anoles in the Lesser Antilles and I think that they are particularly enigmatic and don’t always get the attention that they deserve. The most beautiful species that I have ever seen in person is Anolis marmoratus, a species only found on the island of Guadeloupe. There are different color morphs on different parts of the island.   

Where can people learn more about you and follow you online? 

Twitter: @Melisabetta

Website: www.melissakemp.com

Where do you work and what do you do? 

I am Boricua, and currently an Associate Professor in the Division of Biological Sciences at University of Missouri, Columbia. I have been extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with many talented undergraduate and graduate students that have joined my lab ( Chipojo Lab) and helped me study anoles across the Caribbean. I also had amazing mentors (Richard Thomas, Javier Rodrígues-Robez, Jonathan B. Losos, and Leo J. Fleishman), all willing (may be my stubbornness contributed to their will) to take a risk and allow me to explore ideas regardless of how little sense they made at the time.

What aspects of anole biology do you study, and what have you learned?

As a natural historian, I have established an integrative research program that reflects my interest in developing an intimate understanding of the behavior, ecology, and physiology of anoles under natural conditions, with the ultimate goal of elucidating evolutionary processes. I encourage all members of my lab to follow a similar approach. 

Over 30+ years of studying anoles in their natural habitats, I have learned two fundamental lessons: expect the unexpected and that there is no such a thing as “a stupid question” when the question is derived from observations made in nature. Following this approach, my lab has been able to reveal some unexpected behaviors in anoles, including displaying to predators to deter an attack; finding their way home from distances several order of magnitudes larger than the size of their territories. If that was not unexpected, who would have predicted that anoles would be able to solve novel problems similar to those solved by birds and mammals. Or that anoles would be capable of modulating the properties of their signals to compensate for variation in the distance to potential receivers under the complex conditions of a tropical forest. 

Finally, it is impossible to work with anoles and fail to recognize the incredible diversity of dewlap coloration found in the genus. I’ve been lucky enough, with a few of my colleagues, to provide a potential explanation for this diversity by demonstrating experimentally that dewlap spectral properties (i.e., coloration) are shaped by selection favoring detection by conspecifics under the specific light conditions of the micro-habitat most commonly used by the species. Furthermore, we have shown that selection can favor changes in morphological and physiological traits over ecological time-scale.  

How and why did you start studying anoles?

Growing up in Puerto Rico my interests in the natural history of anoles began during my childhood. I remember vividly catching anoles around my house, and holding them with a noose made out of the stem of grass tied around their waist. I would then place the anoles in close proximity to observe how they displayed to each other. At the time I had no idea how many species of anoles were found in Puerto Rico. However, I learned that if I held two lizards that had similar appearance close together, they usually would display and even fight. Yet, if I did the same with a “brown one” (A. cristatellus) and a “yellow one” (A. pulchellus), they rarely fought. Little did I know that these early observations would come full circle when I was an undergraduate at University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, working in the laboratory of Richard Thomas. In Richard’s lab I met Javier Rodríguez-Robles, who was working on the feeding behavior of the snake Alsophis portoricencesis. Javier invited me to help him with his research, and while doing so, I observed that anoles also displayed to snakes. This observation became the foundation for my graduate research as I pursued both MS and Ph.D. degrees.      

What do you love most about studying anoles?

There is plenty to like about working with anoles. First and foremost is the ability to study them under natural conditions. Many species can be relatively easy to study in the field, allowing one to ask and answer questions under conditions relevant to their biology. A close second is the diversity found in this group, which provides a unique opportunity to study questions at multiple levels (i.e., the individual, population, and community). Finally, anoles are naturally charismatic creatures, which is great for my other passion-photography and science outreach. I find it incredibly rewarding to bring an anole to a classroom of kids or to share my photos and videos of lizards and to see the interests they spark in the kids. It’s even more rewarding when I overhear someone exclaim “what amazing and intriguing behaviors those little lizards have!”   

What is your favorite anole species?

I don’t have a favorite anole species. Instead, I have a favorite anole genus — Chamaeleolis, which is endemic to Cuba. Cubans commonly refer to members of this genus as “Chipojo bobo” due to their sluggish appearance. As a kid my Dad told me stories of a big gray arboreal lizard, with a disproportionally big head and that walks very slowly. He called them “chipojos” and lamented the fact that they were not found in Puerto Rico. It is not a coincidence that my lab is known as the Chipojo Lab, a name that recognizes the Cuban roots of my family and also reflects my favorite group of anoles. I was very lucky that I was able to study the behavior of two species of Chipojo bobo, C. barbatus and C. porcus, as part of fieldwork that I did in Cuba in 1997 and 1999. It should be noted that Chipojo bobos are greatly understudied, with only a handful of studies describing their natural history.   

Where can people learn more about you and follow you online?

Website: Chipojo Lab

Blog:  Chipojolab Blog