Anole Annals

Today’s Island of the Day is actually a set of three islands that make up The Cayman Islands: Little Cayman, Grand Cayman, and Cayman Brac.

Little Cayman is a quiet little diving community with less than 100 residents, made up mostly of expats and people who run the hotels that host the tourists attracted by some of the best diving and snorkeling in the Caribbean. When I was there, we met some locals who gave us a tour of the island and we circumnavigated Little Cayman in about 20 minutes by car. We saw the endangered Cyclura caymanensis on the northern side of the island, in a spot where they congregate for tourists to feed them. As far as Anolis go, Little Cayman has Anolis maynardi, a very long-snouted green anole. They also have a red-dewlapped population of Anolis sagrei that Jason Kolbe showed is more closely related to populations of A. sagrei on Cuba than they are to populations of red-dewlapped A. sagrei on Grand Cayman.

The Western arm of Grand Cayman, the biggest island, feels a little bit like South Beach in Miami, with expensive resort hotels, boutique shopping, and a rocking beach and nightlife scene. As you go farther east, you find the the classic Caribbean dry forests growing among the karst outcroppings. The endangered Grand Cayman Blue Iguana, Cyclura lewisi, has a remnant population in and around the botanical gardens on the east end of the island. This species is not blue like Anolis gorgonae but it does have a bluish-green sheen depending on how the light hits it.

The Grand Cayman Blue Iguana
(photo from the Wikipedia page)

Anolis conspersus is notable on Grand Cayman – it is related to A. grahami from Jamaica but has evolved a beautiful purplish-blue dewlap, very different from A. grahami’s yellow dewlap.

Cayman Brac feels like Little Cayman, except that it is bigger, has a few population centers, and is dominated by a bluff that grows from nothing in the west to a towering 150 feet in the east. During hurricanes, people living on Cayman Brac used to climb up to and take refuge in caves that weave back into the bluff. We spent some time on Brac looking for a cryptic invasion of Anolis sagrei sagrei into the endemic Anolis sagrei luteosignifer population. That project is ongoing in the lab. It was fun to work there and we met many friendly people.

For more on Cayman herps, check out: CaribHerp.org.

Possible Cage For Lizard Field Experiments

By Jonathan Losos

On February 27, 2013

In Research Methods

On a recent trip to Toronto, eminent bee-man and pollination biologist James Thomson showed me his lab, including a cage used for bee pollination studies. The cardboard box is a “box of bees” that can be bought commercially and the experiment involves training bees to go to containers with different colors. Despite being fascinated by the research, my mind couldn’t help but wandering to thinking about how useful such a contraption could be to set up in the field for ecological or behavioral anole studies. As you can see, the cage is big enough that it could house a number of anoles at natural densities, and the mesh lets sunlight and rain through. James kindly informed me that the cages can be purchased at Bioquip; the largest they stock is 6′ (h) x 6′ (w) x 12′ (l), but James told me that larger models can be custom-ordered, and that they are very hardy in the field. Someone should try this!

Anole Or Not Anole?

By Jonathan Losos

On February 26, 2013

In Anole Photographs

Time for everyone’s favorite parlor game. Your AA correspondents are out in the field, and this turned up. So, which is it? And what species, exactly?

Let’s Improve A Wikipedia Article For Anoles

By Martha Muñoz

On February 25, 2013

In Ask the Experts

The Wikipedia page for Polychrotidae

The great thing about Wikipedia is that we can rapidly access information about, well, pretty much anything. The bad thing is that the information available isn’t always accurate or professionally curated. As far as the natural world is concerned, folks are better served visiting more curated sites. For example, if you’re looking for information on anoles, my recommendations would be to visit the Encyclopedia of Life, Caribherp, or even the Anolis genome site if you are specifically interested in the genetics of anoles. But the truth is that people interested in anoles will often go straight to Wikipedia. As members of the Anolis research community, we have the opportunity to evaluate the pages and make suggestions for improvements. Follow this link to the Polychrotidae page. I pose the following challenge to you – Can you find the errors on this page? Can you find where this page could be improved? I will compile the appropriate suggestions and send them to Wikipedia so that they can curate this page. Ready, set, go!!

New Guide To The Reptiles And Amphibians Of Guyana

By Jonathan Losos

On February 24, 2013

In New Research

Based on a long-standing program of field exploration initiated by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the University of Guyana, with further support from the American Museum of Natural History and the Royal Ontario Museum, a distinguished cast of authors, each with extensive experience in Guyana, has just published this enormous and useful monograph. Part of the abstract is appended below, but more importantly you may be wondering, just which anoles occur in Guyana? The answer is that there are at least five native species (auratus, fuscoauratus, ortonii, planiceps, and punctatus). They note, as well, that chrysolepis is reported to occur in Guyana as well, but all chrysolepis group specimens they examined turned out to be planiceps.

In addition, at least one Lesser Antillean species occurs in the cities of Georgetown and Kartabo. These invaders have been identified as both A. extremus from Barbados or A. aeneus from Grenada and the Grenadines, but the authors were unable to find any reliable morphological characters that could distinguish the two species, and thus could come to no conclusion about which species, or both, occur in several cities in Guyana, though they did note that Ernest Williams had identified many of the specimens in museums from Guyana as A. aeneus, as good a reason as any to attribute them to that species. The authors conclude “Clearly, the taxonomic status of Anolis aeneus versus Anolis extremus needs further investigation, both in areas where they occur in the West Indies and where they have been introduced on islands and the mainland of South America.”

Honorary anole friend Polychrus marmoratus also occurs in Guyana and is pictured above.

The first half of the two-page abstract:

Saba: Caribbean Herpetofauna Island of the Day

By Yoel Stuart

On February 23, 2013

In All Posts

Time for some geographical Jeopardy.

The answer is: The highest point in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The question is: What is Mount Scenery?

At a towering 870m, the active volcano Mt. Scenery on the island of Saba (pronounced say-buh), is the correct response. Saba is an island near St. Kitts and St. Barts in the Lesser Antilles and is the smallest special municipality of the Netherlands. At only 5 sq. miles (13 sq. km), it doesn’t have too many people (1,824 in 2001) or terrestrial herps (7). Of those herps, only one is endemic to Saba, and that is, of course, an anole – Anolis sabanus! You can find more information on the rest of the Saban herps at Caribherp.org.

Invasive Anolapalooza In Saint Martin

By Jonathan Losos

On February 22, 2013

In Introduced Anoles

Anolis cristatellus moving in on St. Martin. Photo by Mark Yokoyama

Mark Yokoyama has just published a review of the introduced reptiles and amphibians of St. Martin, where he lives, and there are a lot of them, including several anoles. Anolis cristatellus has apparently just arrived at some resorts and may be spreading, and A. sagrei has been there for a while. We recently discussed another article in the same issue of IRCF Reptiles & Amphibians, which reported that A. sagrei is now in the Turks and Caicos and may be interacting with a A. scriptus, a close relative of A. cristatellus. If A. sagrei and A. cristatellus become well-established on St. Martin, it will be interesting to see what happens when they come into contact. Of course, more importantly is how they will interact with the native species, A. gingivinus, which is ecologically moderately similar to these two trunk-ground anoles, and A. pogus, which is small and potentially a prey item, especially for the more robust A. cristatellus.

Yokoyama also notes of an apparently short-lived invasion of A. bimaculatus in the 90’s and an enigmatic single specimen of A. marmoratus collected a half century ago.

Anolis Sagrei Invades The Turks And Caicos

By Jonathan Losos

On February 20, 2013

In Introduced Anoles

Anolis sagrei certainly gets around, and it’s added another locality to its ever-expanding range: the Turks and Caicos. AA contributor Joe Burgess recently published a paper in the most recent edition of IRCF Reptiles & Amphibians documenting its occurrence on the island. As we’ve come to expect, the population is quite numerous and–ominously–the native A. scriptus–itself also a trunk-ground anole–was not very common at the site. Anolis scriptus is a close relative of the Puerto Rican A. cristatellus and we’ve reported previously on these two species battling it out in Miami and Costa Rica. Stay tuned.

Cybotoid Blitz On The Encyclopedia Of Life

By Martha Muñoz

On February 20, 2013

In Anoles and Anolologists in the News, Education and Anoles

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” –Thomas Henry Huxley

These are lofty words from one the world’s most impressive autodidacts. Thomas Huxley taught himself German and Greek by candlelight, endured years in crowded quarters with teenage midshipmen aboard the HMS Rattlesnake just to be able to learn about jellyfish, and taught himself comparative anatomy though countless hours behind a microscope. He may be most famously known as one the most important champions of evolution, but to me he is equally memorable for his firm belief in equal access to knowledge.

Image courtesy of David M. Hillis, Derrick Zwickl, and Robin Gutell, University of Texas

Were he alive today, I believe that Thomas Huxley would be a huge supporter of the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL). The EOL takes self-learning to the next level by providing unprecedented access to species information that is readable, comprehensive, and professionally curated. Since 2007, this open-access web portal has been cataloging the world’s biodiversity. Yes, you read correctly. EOL wants nothing less than to create informative pages for all of the world’s species. Last count, that was somewhere around 8.7 million species, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that number were much, much higher. In May 2012, the EOL hit one million species pages, which gives a sense of how successful the mission has been, and also how far they have to go.

Anole predation in Guadeloupe

By Pierre Legreneur

On February 19, 2013

In Natural History Observations

Currently in Guadeloupe to investigate in collaboration with the National Park the distribution of sub-species of anoles with a colleague of the University of Toulouse (France), we saw an extraordinary scene of predation of a female anole (Anolis marmoratus speciosus) by Scolopendra gigantea. In Guadeloupe, the predation pressure is essentially due by cats, dogs, blackbirds and thrushes. At our knowledge, the scolopendre have never been reported before …