Green anole recently captured on Grand Cayman
This fella was caught a week and a half ago near North Side fire station, Grand Cayman. It’s the first green anole found outside the capital, Georgetown. The question: what is it? Anolis carolinensis? Anolis porcatus? Something else?
In fact, I frequently get asked whether a particular green anole is carolinensis or porcatus. Some people say they can tell them apart. I’m not so sure.
As anole specialists we sometimes overlook how exciting our animals can be to other biologists and the general public. After returning to campus with a male Anolis equestris yesterday the people on my floor were amazed by this animal (granted they work on fruit flies). Photos were taken and shared with friends. While we would likely default to using cut and dry adjectives to describe most lizards, I think that the quote below demonstrates well the emotions that a non-scientist feels when observing a giant green lizard.
“OMFG! Is it just me or is that a freaking gorgeous animal? Look underneath it’s feet, the rubber part of the toes! aww. I cant get over it’s chin..Why do Lizards have that elongated loose neck…what is it called and is it used for digesting food? Your camera takes great photos. squishy and i wanna kissy. 🙂
Ok I’ll stop”
Thanks to Didem Sarikaya for passing this along. Didem’s photo is below.
Several community challenges have emerged on Anole Annals in recent years such as the popular “Spot the anole” series (here, here, and here for example). Today I raise a new challenge to anole enthusiasts worldwide. I challenge you to post a single photo of anoles in the wild with the greatest species diversity. Integrity counts: photos and lizards should not be manipulated. The lizards should have naturally come into close proximity on their own volition.
To start this out I will set the bar to beat at three species. I took this photo last weekend at the University of Miami arboretum. The three species, from left to right, are A. distichus, A. carolinensis, and A. sagrei. I expect that three should be relatively easy to beat so lets see what you’ve got!
For years I’ve been perplexed by the definition of native because it seems to vary greatly (almost as confusing as the definition of species itself – there are “species” that vary only through geography). Is native a time dependant variable? Does it refer to a pre-Columbian period? (Of course even the term “Native American” is nebulous at best – Kennewick Man).
The reason I bring up this question is that it seems logical to me that Anolis carolinensis originated in the Caribbean, specifically in Cuba. Based on the present day currents through the Florida Straights my guess would be somewhere in western Cuba. If western Cuba is indeed the point of origin, the most likely seed species would be Anolis porcatus. Possibly over hundreds of thousands of years including an ice age, carolinensis adapted to cooler and cooler temperatures and eventually established itself throughout the southeastern United States.
Thom, Sanger, Michele Johnson, and I have been working on a paper on juvenile morphology and behavior in an anole community in Barahona, Dominican Republic. Our only problem is that A. brevirostris juveniles move so fast, we didn’t get any photos while we observed them.
So…does anyone have a photo of an A. brevirostris juvenile? If so, you will of course receive credit for your photo in addition to truckloads of good karma!
Fighting carolinensis. Photo from https://twitter.com/#!/tsansmerci/status/183640654881095681/photo/1
Wowie zowie! Check that out. The top carolinensis is holding the other one in mid-air by its jaws. No wonder they have such big heads (female carolinensis heads are much smaller) and such powerful toepads.
Previously we reported on the efforts to raise money to produce a book on endangered lacertid lizards. The fund-raising is going well, thanks to many AA readers and others. Here’s the latest:
First of all, THANK YOU to all of our backers! The big news is that we reached our Kickstarter goal yesterday, and that means one thing: We’re going to Spain!
We couldn’t have done it without every one of you. By the end of yesterday, our 199 backers had pledged a total of $15,268 — an average pledge of over $76. We’ve been overwhelmed by the generosity of our friends, family, and lots of folks we’ve never even met before!
Now that we’ve reached our “do or die” goal, we get to put all the money we’ve raised into our book, The Symbol: Wall Lizards of the Pityusic Archipelago. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make this project even better! We’ve still got 10 days left before our Kickstarter campaign is over. The initial $15,000 we’ve raised will get us to Ibiza and Formentera for 1 month of photography, allow us to lay out the book, and help us print a small initial press run for sale on the islands.
So what’s next?
We’re photographers, and that means we love to see our pictures printed — that’s why we first envisioned this project as a book! But we also realize that the world of reading is changing, and not everyone wants to carry a book around with them. So we want to develop The Symbol into an iPad app available in Apple’s App Store. Along with the basic book, we will add slideshows and short videos into this “app-book,” creating a true multimedia experience.
Building the app will cost us about another $5000. With 10 days to go, we think we can make this happen! Here’s what we can do to make it worth your while:
1) When we reach $17,500: For new and existing backers at the $25 level or above (and existing backers who increase their pledge to $25 or more), we’ll give you a beautiful PDF edition of The Symbol to read on any computer or mobile device. We’ll also make the PDF edition of the book freely availableto Ibiza and Formentera’s primary schools.
2) When we reach $20,000: We will develop the iPad edition of The Symbol: Wall Lizards of the Pityusic Archipelago — an interactive e-book enhanced with additional images and video clips. We will also donate a hard copy of The Symbol to every primary school on Ibiza and Formentera.
So what can you do?
If you’re a backer who has pledged less than $25, increase your pledge to $25 or more to get the PDF edition of The Symbol when we reach $17,500! And help us get the word out! I know every one of our backers has a few friends who would love to support this project. Use email and social media to share the link to our campaign. Tell your friends that you made a pledge, and that they should too!
Thanks again for your incredible generosity! Once our expedition begins, we’ll be posting images and videos from the field regularly. Expect these e-updates to begin when we leave for Spain in mid-June. We’ll see you then!
All the best,
Neil Losin, Nate Dappen, and Valentin Perez-Mellado
Otocryptis wiegmanni. Photo by Akila De Silva from http://lazy-lizard-tales.blogspot.com/2012/01/year-of-dragon-amazing-agamids.html
A while back we had a post discussing the many times lizards have evolved dewlaps, and more recently our mystery lizard was a most anole-like agamid lizard, Sitana ponceriana. Above is a close relative of Sitana, Otocryptis wiegmanni, doing its best anole imitation. Really, someone needs to do a comparative anatomical study of all these dewlaps to see how similar they are in construction–I’m guessing pretty similar!
The photo comes from a cool website, The Lazy Lizard’s Tales, and this particular post is chockful of cool looking agamids
Anolis carolinensis - the green anole. Photo by Neil Losin
The Anolis carolinensis – A. sagrei interaction in the SE United States has been discussed on quite a few occasions on this site (see [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] and others). Anolis carolinensis is the only anole native to the US but A. sagrei has invaded much of the former’s range by inhabiting nearly all of Florida, some of southern Georgia, and parts of Louisiana and Texas. The Anolis community has focused a great deal of attention asking: what is the ecological, behavioral, and evolutionary effect of A. sagrei on A. carolinensis.
A new paper by Jessica Edwards and Simon Lailvaux of the University of New Orleans, “Display behavior and habitat use in single and mixed populations of Anolis carolinensis and Anolis sagrei lizards,” explores this interaction even further.
Comparison of panfish poles, click for larger image
In a comment a few months ago I promised a review of alternatives to the beloved but discontinued long-backordered, Cabela’s Telescopic Panfish pole. As of Monday, Cabela’s claims that the panfish poles we have grown to love will be available again on May 6th. With any luck they will be back to stay and the review that follows will be moot, but after being fooled by two previous restock dates that came and went, we set out to evaluate alternatives. Read on for a review of each.
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