Anole Annals

I’m a big fan of predation events, and after two and a half months of working with Sitana in a site bizarrely devoid of predators, I had high hopes for Miami. I was not disappointed, and on my second day, had the chance to watch this snake capture and eat a female Anolis sagrei. This happened in the grounds of the Florida International University, Biscayne Bay Campus, where I was collecting some preliminary data on A. sagrei territory overlap. The photo is from relatively early in the lizard consumption process, before the snake (a Southern Black Racer, Coluber constrictor priapus) turned the lizard around and swallowed it head first.

I initially thought the anole was A. distichus, which are abundant in the area where I saw the snake. On seeing that it was in fact A. sagrei, I realised that I might have unwittingly played a role in the lizard’s demise. I had in fact been trying to catch a female A. sagrei in the vicinity myself, and must have chased her right into the grasp of this snake! I like to think of the situation as my having facilitated the snake’s successful capture, and not as being out-lizarded by a baby snake, but I know I’m just deluding myself…

Thanks to Gabe Gartner and James Stroud for identifying the snake.

Hueyfest A Great Success

By Jonathan Losos

On October 12, 2013

In All Posts

Outside of the program distributed at Hueyfest. Designed by Barry Sinervo.

Outside pages of the program distributed at Hueyfest. Designed by Barry Sinervo.

A week ago Friday, 60 people gathered at the Burke Museum in Seattle to celebrate the career of Ray Huey. And what a career it’s been: thermal ecophysiology, comparative methods development, rapid evolution in Drosophila, effects of global warming on ectotherms, and much, much more.

And we heard all about it, and then some, in the eight talks that filled the day’s proceedings. The presentations were many and varied, but all had one theme: the important role Ray has played not only in the development of important ideas in science, but in the lives of the people with whom he has interacted. Here’s a few highlights:

Paul Hertz, who has worked with Ray since they were graduate students, reflected on Ray then and now

Paul Hertz, who has worked with Ray since they were graduate students, reflected on Ray’s early days up to the present

Some of the photos of Ray in earlier days presented by Hertz

Next up was Joel Kingsolver, who provided an insightful analysis of Ray’s publishing approach.

The “Rediscovery” Of Anolis Proboscis, And The Evolution Of A Viral Internet News Story

By Luke Mahler

On October 11, 2013

In Anoles and Anolologists in the News

If you work on Anolis lizards, there’s a good chance you’ve been asked about the recent rediscovery of the long-thought-to-be-extinct “Pinocchio Anole” within the last week. As Anole Annals reported on October 7, this story has hit the big time. After being featured on the Huffington Post, the tale of this rediscovery went viral, receiving extensive news coverage worldwide.

The catch, as most Anole Annals readers are doubtless aware, is that the Pinocchio Anole wasn’t just recently rediscovered. It was rediscovered in 2005, and has since been the subject of field studies resulting in no fewer than five published works (six if you count “Finding Anolis proboscis,” Steve Poe’s 2010 Anolis Newsletter article about finding Anolis proboscis).

What gives? How can the central claim of such a major scientific news item be fundamentally incorrect?

I propose the following hypothesis: This story evolved to its current state by good old-fashioned natural selection. I think that an initially accurate web story was repeatedly and imperfectly replicated, and that as the story was picked up by increasingly larger news outlets, important details were lost or altered during transcription (perhaps selectively, since discovery makes good copy), resulting in the evolution of an incorrect news item.

If I have things right (it’s possible I don’t know all the details), the story started with an informational advertisement from the ecotourism company Destination Ecuador.

If you read that article, it’s pretty accurate with the potential exception of a single use of the word “re-discovery” to describe the event during which the Tropical Herping team found Anolis proboscis. The use of that word is admittedly a little strange and perhaps a bit unwise, but the article makes it very clear that the actual rediscovery of the species took place in 2005, and describes a successful scientific expedition to study the species in the wild in 2010. To me the point of this article is “with our ecotourism company, you can have a chance to travel with experts to see a weird, rare, recently-rediscovered lizard species.”

Next comes an article by Douglas Main on livescience.com, which appears to be the original source of the viral news item. If you read the LiveScience article, it’s worded in a way that tells a narrative of very recent rediscovery (which is not really true) without ever explicitly stating it.

Brown Anole At Bermuda International Airport?

By Jonathan Losos

On October 9, 2013

In Introduced Anoles

Mark Outerbridge recently posted this photo in a comment, writing: “This photo of an anole hatchling was taken (via cell phone, hence the poor quality) by a member of the public in the departure lounge at the Bermuda international airport. Could it be a brown anole?”

We’ve already reported on brownies in Bermuda, but who would have thought they were going in on commercial flights? Or maybe they’re heading home? Is this a brown anole? Could it be Anolis grahami or some other species?

Adapting Anolis: The New Film On Cuban Anoles

By Jonathan Losos

On October 8, 2013

In Anole Videos

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUv0BbQ91wo

In the last year or two, we’ve seen a number of documentaries on Cuban anoles, and here’s another, a 12-minute piece featuring A. equestris, A. vermiculatus, A. ahli (I think), A. sagrei, A. angusticeps, and others. Worth watching, just for the closing line, “There are over 300 anole species in the Caribbean, making the Anolis lizard one of the planet’s most diverse and evolutionarily significant animals.”

Anoles On Huffpo!

By Jonathan Losos

On October 7, 2013

In All Posts

The Huffington Post featured an article yesterday on our old friend [1,2,3], Anolis proboscis. In these pages, this species has been called the horned anole of Ecuador, but Huffpo, following a post two days earlier on Livescience, calls it the Pinocchio anole. You make the call.

The article is about a group of our friends at Tropical Herping finding some specimens of this little seen species. Huffpo’s title, “Pinocchio lizard rediscovered in Ecuador after being thought extinct for 50 years,” takes a few licenses, primarily because, as the article notes, the species has been seen a number of times since 2005, which was only 40 years or so after the previous sighting. Still, it’s nice to see anoles getting the attention.

And, more importantly, the article plugs the wonderful new book on the reptiles and amphibians of Mindo, written and lavishly illustrated by the Tropical Herping team. The book is available now in online format and will be for sale in hardcopy before long. Definitely worth checking out.

And late-breaking news: there’s a video as well!

Territorial Dispute

By Brian Hillen

On October 6, 2013

In Anole Photographs, Introduced Anoles, Natural History Observations

I observed this (full size image) interaction in my backyard one afternoon while I was hunting for good pictures. All anoles tend to flee as I walk around my backyard, but some only retreat partially or temporarily. These two stayed relatively out in the open until I moved a little closer, causing one to flee in to the vicinity of the other one causing the event seen in the picture.

Anole Photo Contest 2013

By Jonathan Losos

On October 4, 2013

In All Posts

Who wouldn’t want to win one of these?

It’s that time again! 2014 is just around the corner, which means it’s time to start planning for another year. And what better way to mark the passage of time than with an anole calendar? As we did last year, we’re going to have a photo contest to get the best possible photographs for each month (check out the winning photos from last year). So, today Anole Annals is pleased to announce the 2013 Anole Photo Contest. The goal of the contest is to identify 12 winning photos. The grand prize winner will have her/his photo featured on the front cover of the 2013 Anole Annals calendar and will receive an Anole Annals wristwatch of the ecomorph of her/his choice. The second place winner will receive a copy of the calendar and have her/his photo featured on the backcover of the calendar.

The rules: please submit photos (as many as you’d like) as attachments to anoleannals@gmail.com. To ensure that submissions with large attachments arrive, it’s a good idea to send an accompanying e-mail without any attachments that seeks confirmation of the photo’s receipt. Photos must be at least 150 dpi and print to a size of 11 x 17 inches. If you do not have experience resizing and color-correcting your images, the simplest thing to do is to submit the raw image files produced by your digital camera (or, for the luddites, a high quality digital scan of a printed image). If you elect to alter your own images, don’t forget that its always better to resize than to resample. Images with watermarks or other digital alterations that extend beyond color correction, sharpening and other basic editing will not be accepted. We are not going to deal with formal copyright law and ask only your permission to use your image for the calendar and related content on Anole Annals. We, in turn, agree that your images will never be used without attribution and that we will not profit financially from their use (nobody is going to make any money from the sale of these calendars because they’ll be available directly from the vendor).

Please provide a short description of the photo that includes: (1) the species name, (2) the location where the photo was taken, and (3) any other relevant information. Twelve winning photos will be selected by readers of Anole Annals from a set of 28 finalists chosen by the editors of Anole Annals. The grand prize winning and runner-up photos will be chosen by a panel of anole photography experts. Deadline for submission is November 1, 2013.

Green Anoles, Genomic Evolution And Surfing (Wait, What?)

By Marc Tollis

On October 3, 2013

In New Research

She’s looking at me, probably thinking “Will he eat me”? And I’m looking at her, thinking “How many transposable elements are in your genome?”

I wanted to bring the attention of the Anolis community to our recent publication in Genome Biology and Evolution (Tollis and Boissinot 2013), where we study the population dynamics of those fascinating features of the green anole genome – transposable elements. Transposable elements (TEs) are important components of vertebrate genomes that may seem a bit esoteric to many readers of this blog, yet the Anolis genome has already yielded great insights into how the vertebrate classes differ in terms of these DNA parasites. In a nutshell, our paper shows how microevolutionary forces such as natural selection and genetic drift account for differences which are most obvious when we make macroevolutionary comparisons (i.e. between mammals and reptiles). Even though I’ve cut to the chase a little early, I thought it might be nice to discuss what we know about the study of genomic evolution, and how the Anolis genome is contributing to the field of comparative genomics.

Diversity Within Lesser Antillean Anoles – Name The Species!

By Gregor Weidlich

On October 2, 2013

In Anole Photographs

Hey Folks,

Here is just a little task for you to get rid of unnecessary time. I made a collection of some Lesser Antillen Anoles from pictures, I took over the years or that hav ebeen given to me.

Can you name the species, or even the local morph/subspecies?

additional information: two of the pictures show females.

and here again with higher resolution.

Viele Grüße from Germany