Recently, Kristin Winchell reported on the 2015 Evolution meetings in Guarujá, Brazil. Kristin noted: “Fernanda de Pinho Werneck gave a lightning talk titled “Cryptic lineages and diversification of an endemic Anole lizard (Squamata, Dactyloidae) of the Cerrado hotspot” that I am sad to have missed. If anyone did catch it, please let us know in the comments.”
Well, Fernanda herself responded and summarized her talk: “Hi Kristin, really cool summary of the Anole talks! Here is what I presented at the meetings for Norops meridionalis lighting talk: we found five highly divergent lineages, confirmed by multiple phylogenetic and species delimitation methods. These lineages (potential candidate species) diverged in the early-mid Miocene, when most of the geophysical activity of the Cerrado took place. Population-level analysis for the broader distributed lineages showed evidence for non-stationary isolation by distance, when the rate at which genetic differentiation between individuals accumulates with distance depends on space. Finally, niche conservatism, rather than niche divergence, seems to be the main mechanism that promoted the fragmentation of main populations across the Cerrado. Cheers!”
Fernanda also pointed out that the work is the basis of a paper by Carlos Guarnizo et al. that is in revision at Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. We’ll hear more when the paper appears!
Researchers have previously shown that anoles and other lizards will respond to moving robot lizards. In a recent elegant study in Herpetologica, Joe Macedonia and colleagues have used such robots to investigate what aspects of a lizard’s body or behavior are most important in eliciting responses. The work was conducted in Bermuda, where A. grahami and A. extremus were introduced from Jamaica and Barbados, respectively, in the first half of the last century.
Macedonia and team built robots to look like these two species. It’s worth reading the details of how they built these realistic looking models: “We constructed a conspecific robot body and dewlap to resemble our study species, A. grahami, as well as a heterospecific robot body and dewlap to resemble A. extremus. Excluding the hind limbs and tail of each robot, which were made of airbrushed latex cast from lizard specimens (see Macedonia et al. 2013), each robot body was carved from a thick wooden dowel and attached to a servomotor pushrod. Anterior to the hind limbs, robots were covered with an image created in Adobe PhotoshopH from photos of the study species (Fig. 1). These images were mirrored and joined together at the body midline. Final images were printed onto adhesive-backed fabric and molded around the wooden body, which, together with the latex hindquarters, was attached to the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) perch. Dewlaps were fashioned from white, semitransparent guitar picks that fit into a slot carved in the neck of the robot body. A small hole that was drilled into the guitar pick was secured to a hinge pin that allowed it to pivot and extend. A second small hole in the pick allowed insertion of a thin wire that was attached to the pushrod, which in turn was attached to a servomotor.” The researchers were able to tune two servomotors to produce dewlap extension and head-bobbing patterns similar to those produced by each species. The following movies illustrate what the robots looked like.
In the first experiment, wild A. grahami were presented with robots in the following four treatments: grahami color and grahami display patterns; grahami color and extremus display patterns; extremus color and grahami display patterns; and extremus color and display patterns.
Sixty-seven of 145 lizards responded to the displaying robots, and the strongest response was to the normal-looking grahami. In addition, the lizards dewlapped more to the robot with grahami color but extremus display pattern than they did to either of the robot treatments with extremus coloration; however, in terms of head-bobbing, the grahami did not distinguish between the three other treatments, responding similarly to all three at a lower headbobbing rate than to the normal- looking and behaving grahami robot.
In a second experiment, wild grahami were exposed to robots that looked like grahami and that: bobbed and dewlapped; only bobbed; or only dewlapped. Unexpectedly, they dewlapped the most to the robots that only dewlapped, and headbobbed the most to the robots that only headbobbed.
Macedonia et al. conclude the paper by suggesting that in the future, the best way to further this line of research will be to develop robots that can be controlled in real-time such that the robot’s behavior can be responsive to what the subject lizard does.
Assuming you can’t get your lizards to fly themselves to your lab, you might want to read this information on how to transport them home. Photo from http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/27371609
After years of transporting live anoles from the Caribbean to my lab in the United States in my checked luggage, this summer in the Dominican Republic, a Delta Airlines agent refused to accept our cooler full of lizards as luggage for our plane. After pursuing every avenue we could think of, it became clear that our only remaining option was to ship the lizards as cargo. We spent several days working out this process, and after making a number of mistakes, we finally arrived at a relatively smooth procedure. To prevent others from having to learn these steps on their own, if such a situation arises for other researchers, we’ve written out the steps that worked for us below. The details provided are for the airport in Santo Domingo, but this general approach may be helpful in other locations as well. (And, if you find yourself in the Dominican Republic in the near future, I’d be happy to give you the contact information for all of the folks listed below.)
Jamaican Anole in Bermuda, Photo by Gerardo Garcia
I would like to know if there is someone working with Anolis grahami in Jamaica?? Or is interested??
As part of my Ph.D. at the University of Salford in Great Britain, I will investigate behavioural plasticity in lizards, more specifically in the Jamaican Anole. Many populations show evolutionary responses to novel and changing environments; how such information becomes associated with a behavioural response is central to understanding animal adaptation to new environments. Species with great behavioural plasticity can adapt to new and changing environments, but could also easily adjust to captive environment.
The Jamaican anoles, originally endemic to the island of Jamaica, were purposefully introduced onto Bermuda in 1905, where they now have an island-wide distribution. We would like to investigate how this species adapts its behaviour to a new environment (Bermuda) and to captivity (Zoo environment). And I would also need data from their original habitat, Jamaica. That is why I’m searching for a partnership with someone in Jamaica.
Evolution 2015 is officially over and we have all sadly left beautiful Guarujá, Brazil. There were a lot of great talks and posters and a great representation of South American students and researchers. For coverage on the conference as a whole, check out #evol2015 on twitter! The herps were few and far between (I only saw 2 in my 16 days in Brazil!) but the posters and talks on herps were numerous. Unfortunately, anoles were poorly represented at Evolution this year with only three anole talks and a couple of others that briefly highlighted anoles. If you weren’t able to make it to Brazil, I’ve got the recap for you here.
A glimpse at the variation in gecko toepads
Starting off in one of the first sessions was a talk by Travis Hagey titled “Independent Origins, Tempo, and Mode of Adhesive Performance Evolution Across Padded Lizards.” Although his talk was mostly about geckos, he did shine the spotlight on anoles for a few minutes. He focused on the phylogenetic pattern of toepad adhesion in pad-bearing lizards: geckos, skinks, and anoles. Specifically he looked at how clinging ability (measured as angular detachment – check out one of his videos showing this) varied within and among clades. Unsurprisingly, he found that anoles don’t cling nearly as well as geckos. He also demonstrated that gecko toepad diversification best followed a Brownian motion model with weak OU and anole toepad diversification was best fit by a strong Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process. In other words, gecko toepads diversified slowly over a very long period while anoles were quickly drawn towards an optimum over a short time-period. Travis concluded that these patterns explain why there is a large amount of diversity in gecko toepads but not in anole toepads.
Next up was Joel McGlothlin, who also gave a non-anole talk titled “Multiple origins of tetrodotoxin‐resistant sodium channels in squamates.”
I suppose we should be glad that Antiguan racer is back from the brink of extinction, even if it’s bad news for this Antiguan anole.
An article in Oryxrecently trumpeted the successful elimination of rats and mongooses from the 15th Antiguan offshore island. Once these invasive depredators have been removed, local species, including the endangered Antiguan racer have thrived, increasing in population over the last 20 years from ca. 50 to over 1,000. Though not endangered, anoles have benefited as well, with three-fold higher densities on islands on which the invaders have been removed compared to those on which they remain.
The New York Times yesterday had a long article on Manuel Leal’s research on the homing ability of Anolis gundlachi. Manuel has discovered that if you catch a gundlachi and let it go somewhere else in the forest, it will very quickly find its way back to its tree. He’s done a number of experiments to see if they’re using magnetic sense, polarizing light or telepathy (ok, maybe not the last one), but so far has been unable to figure out how they manage to get home. In fact, as the article states, he’s looking for suggestions. Read the article and give him such much-needed help!
Karen Cusick keeps a close eye on her backyard anoles and reports her observations–with lovely photos–on her blog, Daffodil’s Photo Blog. Recently, she described a brown anole that has a penchant for eating spiders, and she told us how it does it: “It sits very still and carefully watches the grass near the back door, and then suddenly sprints over to a spot in the grass and comes up with a spider in its mouth. It must really like spiders! Ants, on the other hand, are pretty much ignored by anoles. I’ve watched ants walk right past anoles, even walking over their feet or tails, and the anoles don’t even seemed tempted.”
Rube Irizarry posted the photo on Facebook’s Biodiversidad de Puerto Rico page. I’m guessing it’s an Anolis cristatellus eating a hapless Hemidactylus, whose tail was previously nabbed by who knows what.
The Leal Lab is hard at work in Puerto Rico this summer, and they’re reporting all about it on Chipojo Lab.
Ellee Cook, who recently graced these pages with a report on fever in anoles, is studying the behavior of female A. gundlachi and is reporting on the trials and tribulations of behavioral field work.
Meanwhile, Edward Ramirez is studying the physiology of hybrids between the grass anoles A. pulchellus and A. krugi.