One of my favorite graphic representations of a typical anole community is the one where all ecomorphs are hanging out together in a tree and a scrub next to said tree. Each ecomorph has its structural microhabitat place and they are all spaced out evenly across the tree to represent competition. Originally the figure was published by Williams (1983) and then modified later on. Arriving on the Greater Antilles, one thus expects to promptly be able to say hi to all these ecomorphs at the next best tree. Well, from my personal experience, I can tell you that this is unfortunately not the case.
Localities where all ecomorphs are found together are scarce, and all of them are famous, having served as field sites for the most groundbreaking of anole discoveries. But what about the rest of them? Something must prevent the co-occurrence of ecomorphs in all these other places. This was noted before: Losos (2009) remarked that all utilized structural microhabitats exploited by all ecomorphs are present throughout the islands, so “complete” ecomorph communities should also be able to occur everywhere.
A common explanation for the absence of certain “functional types” (= Anolis ecomorphs) from local communities is a process that is called “filtering.” Modern community assembly theory distinguishes two such types of filters: 1. Biotic interaction filters and 2. Environmental filters.
Biotic filtering involves competitive exclusion: For anoles this phenomenon caused ecological speciation which led to the convergent evolution of the ecomorph communities. But biotic filtering should not be expected to occur at this stage of the radiation: Different ecomorphs are not competing for the same structural microhabitat niche in different localities. This leaves environmental filtering. In our study recently published in Ecology and Evolution, on which I am reporting here, we tested whether environmental filtering could be a possible explanation for the absence of ecomorphs in local communities.
First, we modeled Anolis ecomorph community completeness by constructing environmental niche models for each ecomorph (the sum of species belonging to that ecomorph) on each island. These models were then overlaid for all ecomorphs per island. 
The map for ecomorph community completeness shows a very patchy distribution of areas where all ecomorphs are expected to occur. Comparisons of environmental niches among these islands revealed that only Hispaniola and Cuba have their complete Anolis ecomorph communities occurring in a similar bioclimatic parameter space.
This patchiness could be explained by elevation for all islands except Jamaica: the Anolis community completeness map strongly resembles the topographic relief of the Greater Antilles. Looking more closely into the climatic parameters, Jamaica has much lower daily and annual temperature ranges which are also not related to the island’s elevation, whereas in the rest of the Greater Antillean islands, they are. Occurrence probability of ecomorphs seems to be coupled to environmental parameters, which explains why some ecomorphs are “filtered out“ in some locations: they do not encounter a favorable environment there.
Since I mentioned initially that filtering relates to “functional types” (not species), the filtering must be a result of certain functional properties of the Anolis ecomorphs’ phenotype. We wanted to take the study a step further and actually investigate one (among many) possible functional trait: body mass.
Small in size, but a global giant in biodiversity, Ecuador is awash in all manner of fauna and flora. Birds, butterflies, trees—the country is a hotspot for just about everything. But no group of organisms is more beautiful, more charismatic, more scientifically captivating than Ecuador’s reptiles and amphibians. The Amazon rainforest dominates the attention of the public, but other parts of the country, especially the mountainous regions, are just as biologically rich. One such area is the small parish of Mindo in Pichincha Province, home to 102 species of creepy crawlies. And what an ensemble! Brilliant colors, toxic skin and venom, sweet serenades, menacing looks, gorgeous displays—this region is an encyclopedia of herpetology in just 268 square kilometers.
