Anole Annals

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While you’re shopping on zazzle, check out the Anole Annals store there. Everything’s on sale for at least 20% off, including the ecomorph line of watches, ties, playing cards and more.

At last we’ve found a place in the Caribbean that Anolis sagrei hasn’t invaded: Cuba! Because, of course, A. sagrei is native there, as well as 63 other species of anoles. In fact, there are no introduced anoles on Cuba, which is quite unusual. There are, however, a number of other herps that have invaded there, as a recent paper in Herpetological Conservation and Biology by Borroto-Páez discusses. Here’s the abstract:

The number of introductions and resulting established populations of amphibians and reptiles in Caribbean islands is alarming. Through an extensive review of information on Cuban herpetofauna, including protected area management plans, we present the first comprehensive inventory of introduced amphibians and reptiles in the Cuban archipelago. We classify species as Invasive, Established Non-invasive, Not Established, and Transported. We document the arrival of 26 species, five amphibians and 21 reptiles, in more than 35 different introduction events. Of the 26 species, we identify 11 species (42.3%), one amphibian and 10 reptiles, as established, with nine of them being invasive: Lithobates catesbeianus, Caiman crocodilus, Hemidactylus mabouia, H. angulatus, H. frenatus, Gonatodes albogularis, Sphaerodactylus argus, Gymnophthalmus underwoodi, and Indotyphlops braminus. We present the introduced range of each of the 26 species in the Cuban archipelago as well as the other Caribbean islands and document historical records, the population sources, dispersal pathways, introduction events, current status of distribution, and impacts. We compare the situation of introduced herpetofauna in Cuba with that in other Caribbean islands. We also document impacts, areas of missing information, and possible directions for future research. The paper contributes a systematic review as well as new knowledge for national and international agencies and databases. This information is critical for use in conservation, management, and eradication. Additionally, it alerts management authorities as to specific pathways of introduction for proactive action, which may be used to avoid potential introductions.

A typical PCA table that I trawled from the internet.

This post isn’t really very anole-specific, but because lots of studies of anoles use principal component analyses, I think it’s at least tangentially relevant.

PCA is a way of to reduce the variation in a data set to a few dimensions by constructing new variables that combine variables that are highly correlated with each other into a smaller number of variables called PC axes. I won’t go into the details of the method here, because Ambika Kamath explains all in a post she wrote on her blog a while back.

What I want to mention here is how we interpret these new statistical axes. Back in my day, computer programs spit out a matrix of numbers like the one above, which we called “loadings.” These values represented how strongly an individual’s value for each variable was correlated with the individual’s score on the new axes. So, for example, in the table above, values on PCA axis one correlate most strongly with an individual’s values for the top four variables (sodium, calcium, magnesium and chloride concentrations) and most weakly with melt percentage and some other variables.

Now, everyone uses the computer program R to conduct PCAs, and R, too, spits out “loadings.” But those are not your father’s loadings (or my loadings). Rather, those values are the coefficients of the new equation that defines the PCA axis (a PCA axis is a linear regression of all the variables). Thus, in the example above, individuals that scored high on PCA 1 would have the largest largest concentrations of the top four variables; an individuals melt percentage would have little impact on an individual’s score on PC I. Back in the day, we could also access those values, but we called them “coefficients.”

Does this really matter? Only to the extent that what much of the literature used to call “coefficients” is now called “loadings” and what used to be called “loadings” apparently isn’t routinely spit out by R. And, more importantly, most R users are completely unaware of the switcheroo.

Ambika did a very preliminary analysis to see whether the values of coefficients (new “loadings”) and correlations (old “loadings”) are very different. Her tentative conclusion is that they aren’t, so maybe this doesn’t matter much, but it might be worth looking into more.

Elsewhere on Anole Annals, Silas Ginn responsed to a question about what shape anole eggs have. I believe his response deserves a wider audience and so am putting it up here as its own post:

Indeed, anole eggs are long and skinny when they’re laid. But due to their leathery flexible skin, they can expand like a balloon and will grow with age and moisture. I’ve only got experience with Knight anoles, green anoles and probably four or five types of different brown anoles, but they’re all about the same – except that the Knight anoles HATCH at the same size as a green or brown anole.

As for hatchlings of green or browns, they’re so tiny it’s just remarkable! My old workplace was “infested” with a few species of geckoes (in Calgary Alberta, Canada – of all places!) and the baby geckoes popped up all over the place, especially in the filing cabinets where they obviously preferred to lay their eggs between pieces of paper, due to their being hidden & protected so well.

But yeah, at one point I brought in some house-plants – this was a huge ware-house complex where we ran an aquarium fish and reptile importer supplying Western Canada’s pet-shops, plus an outlet to the public, and a custom tank building shop in the back, quite a lot of space and amounting to more than 700 aquariums all told – and the whole place with 35-40ft ceilings and kept at upwards of 30-degrees Celcius all of the time, naturally humidity was such that it actually RAINED inside of the place on a regular basis – a problem in that it brought down the decades-old asbestos spray-on fire retardant insulation material from the ceilings – but we had some very nice sky-lights as well, if it had been kept up better it would’ve made a fantastic space well I mean really fantastic ’cause I loved it even WITH the dust and cockroaches ha-ha.

ANYWAY yeah I brought in some house-plants to liven the place up – should’ve left ’em when I moved on, ’cause they’ve all died since. There was a huge Munstera deliciosa “swiss-cheese plant” which I potted up on top of overhead wooden beams that had been there for decades, as some type of over-head system for a belt-driven power supply back when it was a SWEAT SHOP and then a SLAUGHTER HOUSE for chickens, yuck – we kept the beams for our water supply and oxygen for bagging fish, plus running heated/de-gassed tank-change water, and a master air-line gang-way for running hundreds of little valves off of for all of the little bubblers etc.

But yeah what I did with it MYSELF, was to support some house plants. And this one Munstera got HUGE – it sent out aerial roots, if you know Munstera you know the type I mean – but THESE ones got long enough that not only did they hang down the nine-ten feet to drink from a puddle on the ground beneath it (how did it know there was a puddle there?) which pooled on the polished concrete floor, from leaking tanks, over-spills from the automated tank over-flow water-change system (tanks were individual, and what looked like the typical system where everything’s on a loop, was simply a fill line from huge tanks in the back, run with big pumps only during water changes, and the over-flow went directly to the drains. Which were typically blocked up and one such drain which had been permanently blocked by our swimming-pool canister type “Sand-Filter” from our Koi pond system (several ponds ganged together on one filter) had a huge cray-fish living at the bottom of it, as though the building itself were a concrete island with a lake or ocean below it, and drain pipes more like tunnels carved by urchins or other such burrowing creatures … such was the ecosystem of the place!)

Anyway yeah, that Munstera plant threw out aerial roots that first reached the puddle on the floor, but then I began to wrap ’em around the wooden beams to keep ’em out of the way, and they kept growing down and down – once they’d got a taste of the mineral-rich water down at the bottom there was no stopping ’em! And I kept looping ’em over and over, they kept growing until this became a semi-daily task, where the roots would grow more than ten inches in one night! INSANE house-plants.

But the best of ’em all, was a 30ft Ficus tree. I had been keeping my Knight anoles in ficus trees from the very beginning, and they’d laid their eggs in the pot at the bottom, whereupon they hatched out better than any other time when I tried to incubate ’em artificially.

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Thanks once again to everyone who participated in our photo contest. We received over 200 photos! The results are in, and the winning photos have been assembled into the Anoles 2016 Calendar! The grand prize winner is the photo above, Anolis bahorucoensis, taken by Carlos De Soto. In second place is the photo below, Anolis cristatellus, taken by JP Zegarra.

You can view the rest of the winning photos in the 2016 calendar here! Congratulations to all the winners!

In addition, because we had so many incredible photos, we have created an extra calendar: Obscure Anoles 2016! This calendar features some of the best photos of less common or rarely seen species and behaviors. We hope you enjoy!

Happy holidays, and we wish you all the best in the coming anole-filled year of 2016!

I’ve just returned from a trip to Martinique collecting data for a project I’m working on. In the process of collecting data and animals to bring back for work in the lab, I was able to travel all over to see Anolis roquet across the island, and photograph the different ecotypes/subspecies and their habitats. I was extremely impressed with how variable the island and the Anolis were, and I thought I’d share some of those images with everyone here.

As a bit of background, Martinique is formed from five separate geological regions that each were represented historically as their own precursor islands that joined together to form the current island (Thorpe et al. 2008). As a result of this process, A. roquet on the island is represented by four modal haplotype lineages, with their distribution strongly correlating with the boundaries of those geological regions, except for one modal haplotype lineage being shared between two (Thorpe et al. 2003). Anolis roquet lives across the island in a wide range of habitat types. Their occurrence in disparate habitat types has yielded a number of ecotypes with highly variable coloration and patterning (Thorpe et al. 2012). This variation was significant enough that six subspecies of A. roquet were described by Lazell (1972), all of which are pictured below.

While in Martinique, we were staying in an area called Gros-Morne, which is in the north-central part of the island. This area is part of the central geologic region and the Anolis in this area are from the mesic/transitional ecotype, which is the most widespread form and is what has been considered to be the nominate subspecies, Anolis roquet roquet. This particular portion of the central geological region, however is toward the montane area, so here the animals are more toward that end of the spectrum than the xeric form. Here are a couple photos of animals from this area, as well as a couple shots of the garden and area they were collected:

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AA regular James Stroud aims to find out. The following is taken from the FIU (Florida International University) News:

FIU biology student James Stroud has observed a non-native species of lizard in Bermuda, a potential problem for the island’s critically endangered Bermuda skink.

A two-year conservation project studying the island’s lizard populations led to the discovery of the Cuban brown anole, a species once rumored to inhabit the North Atlantic island, but was never verified until now.

“The Cuban brown anole most likely reached Bermuda by human transport,” said Stroud, a Ph.D. student in theKenneth Feeley Lab. “These lizards hitch rides between ports as unintended stowaways amongst cargo, usually in nursery plants and building materials. Although further research is needed to confirm it, this route of introduction seems likely.”

The introduction of the Cuban anole could pose difficulties for the endangered Bermuda skink, the island’s only native lizard species. Also known as a rock lizard, the skink is listed as critically endangered in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN’s) Red List, the world’s authority on the conservation status of plant and animal species. According to the researchers, Cuban brown anoles excel at thriving outside of their native geographical area. The lizards can live in a variety of natural and human-made habitats, and feed on a variety of prey, potentially putting them at an advantage to other lizard species who might not be as tolerant.

“We have discovered that the Cuban brown anole does not yet overlap its distribution with the Bermuda skink,” Stroud said. “Therefore, the potential effects of the non-native brown anole on the native Bermuda skink are currently unknown. This topic forms part of our ongoing research interests in Bermuda.”

After surveying all of Bermuda, Stroud found populations of the Cuban lizard at all life stages indicating they are thriving in the central part of the island. He also found the established Jamaican anole continues to be found all over the island, but the Antiguan anole has significantly expanded into areas where the Barbadian lizards live. The discovery was made alongside former FIU doctoral student Sean Giery and Bermuda’s Department of Conservation Services.

Originating in Cuba and the Bahamas, the Cuban brown anole is one of the most widespread lizards outside of its native area with large populations found from Florida to Texas, California, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Singapore and Taiwan. Cuban brown anoles can be found in urban environments including downtown Miami and natural environments such as the Everglades. Anoles are very diverse group of lizards and about 372 species are currently known to exist.

Stroud recently traveled to Costa Rica where he conducted the first-ever study of the Cuban brown anole’s ecology and distribution in the Central American country. He is devoting his doctoral research to studying the evolution, interactions and community patterns of Anolis lizards in the tropics.

Two years ago, we reported on a lovely wedding cake with green anole atop, from the nuptial festivities of Alex Gunderson and his wife Katie. Now word comes to us of another anole wedding. AA correspondent Kristin Winchell, who doubles as a grad student in Liam Revell’s lab, was married to Jonathan Zschau this past September on Nantucket Island. As the photo above attests, the wedding cake was tastefully adorned with a bride, a groom, and an anole.

Actually, it was a double wedding. A photo of the second bride, Ms. Ann Ole, is pictured below (made by the groom’s aunt).

It’s that time of year again: The weather is getting colder, lights and trees are going up, and mulled wine and eggnog are on the menu. I’m obviously referring to the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative BIology (SICB). If you’re new to our blog, you’ll learn that SICB is a big deal here at Anole Annals. We like to keep our readers abreast of new and emerging trends in Anolis research. The upcoming SICB, which will be held from January 3rd to 7th in Portland, Oregon, will be no different from previous years. In between trying craft beers and local coffees, we’ll be busy blogging away about new studies in anole ecology, physiology, biomechanics, and evolution.

As you probably also know, anole research is on the rise. The program for the 2016 SICB meeting suggests that this trend is continuing. By my count, there will be 26 anole-related talks and posters at the upcoming meeting, so anoles will certainly have a strong presence. You can see a table with the talks and posters listed here. One of the downfalls of so many talks, however, is that it’s logistically challenging to cover everything on this blog. So, if you’re interested in reading posts from the upcoming meeting, do fill out the poll below. I recognize that there is overlap between topics, but I just want to get an idea of what priorities I should set at at the meeting. On another note, if you will be attending the meeting and you are interesting in blogging, please email me at martha.munoz@gmail.com. We are always looking for bloggers and I can help get you set up to make things easy.