Anole Annals

Ceratophora tennenttii from The Lizard Lab website

We’ve had a continuing series of posts on anole wannabees (most recent here), those lizards other than Anolis that sport dewlaps. Many of the best faux anoles are Asian agamid lizards. Some of these lizards are anole-like in other ways. For example, the fascinating Sri Lankan Ceratophora, though lacking a dewlap, parallels some anoles (well, two in particular), by sporting an appendage on its nose. Read more about these fascinating lizards at Martin Whiting’s Lizard Lab website.

Et tu, Brunneus?

By Thomas Sanger

On May 12, 2012

In Notes from the Field

Anolis brunneus male

Today marked the beginning of my search for Anolis brunneus, the Crooked Island anole. As I discussed in my last post, this species has several unique qualities including its relatively elongate face and permanently pale disposition. I am happy to report that this rarely observed species has been located in all its drab glory. Over the next ten days I hope to collect data on this species’ distribution, ecology, and behavior. I will kick these reports off with a brief background about the island.

Crooked Island is one of the “Out Islands” of the Bahamas, located in the far southeast corner of the island chain. The island is a mix of salt marshes, sea grape, mangrove, and scrub trees rarely reaching more than a few meters high. Despite this seemingly serene picture, the island has a history of failed agricultural efforts, the largest being cotton plantations around the turn of the 19th century which covered ~10% of the total land area. At the peak of the cotton boom the island maintained approximately 1200 inhabitants, primarily slaves, but this has dwindled to only 300 today and continues to fall. The island now appears as an odd mix of both 19th and 20th century ruins that range from abandoned plantation homes to hurricane battered wood frames, many of which have been overtaken by the forests. Except for a few hotels that cater to bonefishermen, the island has virtually no tourism. Crooked island is home to several other lizard species including abundant A. sagrei and Leiocephalus, but more on this in a later post.

I am optimistic that we will come away from this field trip with substantial new data on this species. The one trick, we need to find them! Because of their pale color I have found them extremely difficult to find and track in the trees. Stay tuned!

X Rays and Anoles

By Graham Reynolds

On May 11, 2012

In Research Methods

An exciting week in the Revell Lab, we received our order of 20 poles from Cabelas, and I picked up our new custom portable x-ray system in Newark yesterday.

The use of x-ray technology has been mentioned previously in AA- here, here , here, here, and here. The Losos Lab has used a similar portable x-ray system for the last several years with great success, and so we have obtained our own unit. One of the great advantages of these systems is that they allow researchers to gather highly detailed morphological data without harming the lizards and without using tedious methods such as dissection. The animals are simply anesthetized, imaged, and released after recovery. The Revell Lab has grand aspirations for our system- our graduate student Kristin Winchell plans to use it this summer in her studies of Anolis urban ecology.

A Shiny New Example Of Caribbean Lizard Diversity

By Jonathan Losos

On May 11, 2012

In New Research

The Caribbean skink radiation. Islands identified by name have (or had) mabuyine skinks; others--notably Cuba--do (or did) not.

Think Caribbean lizard diversity and you think of anoles, dwarf geckos, perhaps curly tailed lizards and whiptails. But skinks don’t generally come to mind. Heck, I almost never see skinks in the Caribbean and, anyway, their diversity is very low, with only six Caribbean species.

Previously considered conspecific

Until now. In a recently published monograph, Hedges and Conn have scrutinized the genus Mabuya, using both molecular and morphological characters, and have more than doubled the number of species, from 26 to 61, which they have broken into 16 genera (and, as a sidenote, they also split the family Scincidae into seven families). That so many species went undetected is perhaps not surprising, in that Mabuya, like most skinks, all look alike, with very few characters available to distinguish them. Moreover, a trend of species lumping has occurred historically, obscuring sometimes great differences among taxa, as illustrated in the photo to the left.

Of the 61 species, 39—in six genera—occur on Caribbean islands. Most occur on a single island, and most islands only have one species, though as many as three occur on Hispaniola and St. Thomas, and two on a number of islands. Oddly, Cuba has none. Like anoles, to which they no doubt aspire,

Anolis eightbiticus

By Anthony J Geneva

On May 10, 2012

In Anole Art, Literature, and Humor

All things 8-bit are making a comeback. The worlds of art, technology, fashion and music all have (re)embraced the format, and I, for one, don’t want anoles to be left behind. Here’s my 8-bit take on a member of the disticus clade (bonus points on guessing which one). Drawn in Adobe Illustrator following these instructions, you can also roll your own with a free webapp here.

Farmville Anole

By Jonathan Losos

On May 9, 2012

In Anoles in Commerce

From http://farmvillefreak.com/farmville-animals/farmville-glitch-green-anole-farm-coins?utm_medium=twitter

I have absolutely no idea what this means, but it seems to be a big development in the Farmville world.

Brown Anole Invasion In Georgia

By Jonathan Losos

On May 9, 2012

In Introduced Anoles

They’ve finally arrived in Valdosta, Georgia. Janson Jones reports from the invasion front.

Two Male Anolis Sagrei Face-Off!

By Philip Fortman

On May 8, 2012

In Natural History Observations

Two male Anole lizards pose and posture in a mock fight display. One individual is distinguished by the regrowth of his tail lost in some previous incident. In this incident, no physical contact seemed to have occurred, but biting and locking of jaws in actual combat has been observed between males of this species. These still photos do not convey the rapid change of posture, circling and feinting of attacks. Finally in the last photo the lizard with the regrown tail is seen alone in a victory pose with legs fully extended and tail held straight off the ground. It should also be noted that while I photographed at no time did I observe either male display its dewlap. This may have occurred in a prelude to their face-off on this urban sidewalk arena.

Anolis marcanoi Now Live On The Encyclopedia of Life

By Martha Muñoz

On May 8, 2012

In Education and Anoles, Natural History Observations

There are lofty goals, and then there is the Encyclopedia of Life. In case you haven’t heard of it yet, the Encyclopedia of Life is an international initiative to provide free access to detailed information about all the world’s species. The Encyclopedia of Life, or EOL, has 180 content partners, information from nearly 1,000 collections, over 750,000 species pages and more than 600,000 species images. To date EOL has drawn over 5 million viewers from across the globe.

Two years ago I got to participate in this project by helping to write pages for Anolis species as part of a class project for Harvard’s Herpetology course. In all the unbridled enthusiasm and the sense of endless time that comes with being a young graduate student, I decided that doing a single species page would not be nearly as exciting as describing an entire clade of anoles. Because I knew I would be working extensively with the cybotoids, a clade composed of the trunk-ground anoles from Hispaniola that is so near and dear to my heart, I decided to write pages for the whole group. When I embarked on this journey my list included A. armouri, A. cybotes, A. haetianus, A. longitibialis, A. marcanoi, A. strahmi, A. shrevei, and A. whitemani.

The Carolinensis Anoles of Cuba and Surrounding Islands

By Thomas Sanger

On May 7, 2012

In All Posts

Anolis carolinensis from south Florida. Photo courtsey of Neil Losin

Anolis carolinensis, the slender green anole from the southern United States is no stranger to most readers of this blog. This species is a model system for reproductive biology (here), is an emerging model for studies of development and Evo-devo (here and here), and is the first squamate lizard with a sequenced and annotated genome (here and here). Anolis carolinensis is, however, only one member of a diverse clade of lizards, though the natural history of many of these species is poorly understood relative to their popular cousin. Furthermore, the vast majority of carolinensis anoles* are known from few museum specimens meaning that robust descriptions of their morphology remain difficult to obtain.

I have recently become interested in the carolinensis series (for reasons discussed below) and have set out to better understand their biology. This post is meant to introduce readers to the diversity of carolinensis anoles and to put out a call for additional information that may be out there. While I have searched the wires for literature on these species, the community may know of hidden gems that have otherwise eluded me.

1) Species diversity and biogeography

The 13 species of the carolinensis subgroup and their localities are listed in the table below. Though many of these species were described in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries the list continues to expand as Orlando Garrido and colleagues explore Cuban biodiversity, uncovering local variants to the more widespread species. Garrido has described four new species of Cuban green(ish) anole in the last 25 years and recent molecular analysis suggests that localized variation may be more common than previously appreciated. For example, Rich Glor and co-authors revealed several independently evolving lineages of A. porcatus that are correlated with Cuba’s geological history of partial island submergence (paper here).

The anoles of the carolinensis series. Specimen counts are based on a survey of the big five anole collections. Click to enlarge.

While several species are geographically widespread (A. porcatus, A. allisoni, and A. carolinensis***), the majority of this diversity evolved on relatively small Caribbean islands or in distinct regions of Cuba.