Anole Annals

From New Scientist:

Kristin Winchell

By Carolyn Beans

City living comes with unique challenges. If you’re a lizard, scaling a windowpane without sliding off is one of them. One lizard has already evolved traits to help it do just that.

“Urban areas are just another environment. The animals that live there aren’t somehow immune to natural selection,” says Kristin Winchell of the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Her team compared males of the anole lizard (Anolis cristatellus) in the Puerto Rican cities of Mayagüez, Ponce and San Juan with those in nearby forests.

They found that city lizards regularly clung to objects like walls and windows, proving that they use the full urban environment instead of restricting themselves to wild patches more similar to their forest roots.

Compared with forest-dwellers, city lizards had longer limbs and more lamellae – scale-like structures that help their toes stick to surfaces. These traits probably enable them to stay attached to slippery urban perches. “I chased a lizard that ran straight up a window 30 feet and was out of reach in 15 seconds,” says Winchell. “I couldn’t catch this well-adapted lizard.”

The team also raised urban and forest lizards from the Mayagüez region in the lab and found that differences in limb length and scale number remained, suggesting a genetic basis to the urban lizards’ abilities.

The anole frequently wows scientists with feats of rapid evolution in natural environments. The new finding suggests that this capacity applies to cities as well.

Other urban animals also adapt. We know, for example, that birds alter calls to be heard over city noise and leafcutter ants adapt to elevated temperatures in an urban heat island.

But well-studied examples are rare. “Urban evolution is a really young field,” says Winchell.

Evolutionary biologist Jason Munshi-South of Fordham University in New York agrees. “There aren’t many documented cases of urban evolution yet, but people are going to start looking for them in earnest,” he says.

Munshi-South believes Winchell’s study is an excellent addition to this emerging field. “The next step,” he says, “which I’m excited to see them do, is to identify the genes underlying these adaptive traits.”

Winchell says that, ultimately, understanding urban adaption could help conservation. “Having a grasp on which animals tolerate urbanisation gives us a better idea of which ones we need to focus on when preserving natural habitats,” she says.

Evolution, DOI: 10.1111/evo.12925

I did a bit of herping in Luquillo on the northeast coast of Puerto Rico and the abundance of anoles and frogs  was incredible. I was hoping for help IDing these guys and any insight you might have on these species. I think the first three are the same species?

1. We found this sleeping anole perched up on the back of a sign.

2)    

3)        

4)

5) 

6) This last one was found in the Yunque, not in Luquillo. Not the best photo, but it was a beautiful anole.

Thanks again!

The Dodo provides the full details, but here’s the gist: “I was at the zoo watching the gorilla exhibit [at the San Diego Zoo], and that little lizard came up and just froze when the gorilla started playing with it. He picked it up by the tail a few times, poked at it, but never killed it.”

As Yoel Stuart reported previously in AA‘s pages, Anolis carolinensis has become established at the San Diego Zoo. Who knows which of the zoo’s denizens will be the next to adopt an anole?

and

and this tweet, in turn, refers to this post:

Anolis lizards have established their place in the annals of college textbooks. There are also a growing number of resources available for elementary and high school teachers to bring the biology of anoles into their classrooms as well. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (in collaboration with Jonathan Losos) developed several online modules around anoles: one on the diversity of Anolis lizards, another on speciation, and a virtual lab integrating those topics. Michele Johnson also has several classroom exercises on here website, LizardsandFriends.org, some of which have been discussed on AA previously (here and here). I am writing today to share another exercise with our readers that was a recent success with a group of young scientists-to-be.

Dewlapping fifth graders at GEMS 2016

I recently introduced Anolis lizards to a group of fifth and sixth grade students at a conference aimed at getting young girls interested in the STEM professions. With around 130 girls learning about topics ranging from gemstones, programming, seeds, and urban wildlife the event was a undeniable success. My session introduced the diversity of topics that our community addresses with Anolis lizards. After explaining to students how they could figure out what lizards are anoles at the local pet stores (dewlaps and toepads), I used anoles to demonstrate how animals can communicate without talking. My exercise amounts to a game of charades where the students have a dewlap, a display-action-pattern, and a key representing four species from Puerto Rico (thanks to Travis Ingram). The display patterns are not as complex as real dewlap displays, but were made to allow the students to easily act them out and distinguish between the patterns and it worked great. The kids thought this was a lot of fun and it gave me the opportunity to pepper the discussion with additional comments about animal communication. I originally designed the exercise for fourth through seventh graders, but a curious three-year-old played along just as well during one session. I would be happy if other people used this exercise for their own outreach activities. It can be downloaded here.

In closing I will add that the students were impressed by the brown anole I brought with me. I imagine I would have left a more lasting impression if I brought a knight anole. Things to remember for next year.

This video, shot by Johann Prescher, is of an Anolis lineatus from Curaçao, gracefully jumping from one tree to another. Note, however, what it does just as it lands, pulling up its forebody to contact the trunk with all four legs simultaneously, like a flying squirrel. The mechanics of jumping in anoles have been well-studied, but the mechanics of their landing, not so much. Good research project waiting to be done!

A letter in Anole Annals’ inbox. Can anyone help?:

I am a student from xxx High School in New York. As a science research student interested in phylogeny of squamata, I have come across Bayesian Inference quite a lot. I have spent a lot of time researching bayes theorem and how it relates to phylogeny, but have yet to find an article that makes sense to me as a sophomore in High School. Do have an explanation to bayesian inference and how it used in phylogenetic research? Being interested in phylogenetics, I have looked into researching phylogenetic relationships of Pogona based on molecular data. I have yet to find a taxonomic revision of Pogona, the latest one I found only used morphological data, Taxonomy of Pogona (Reptilia: Lacertilia: Agamidae) by Witten in 1994. Do you think this would be a good topic for me? In addition to selecting genera to study, I have had trouble understanding the methodology that goes into phylogenetic studies. For the most part the methodology resembles collecting DNA data through PCR, then bayesian analysis is run using MrBayes. Can you explain to me the process of choosing primers for use in PCR? Can you explain what and how data is inputted into MrBayes? Would you or anyone you may know possibly be interested in assisting me with my research in the phylogeny of squamates?