Anole Annals

Anolis marcanoi. Photo by Rich Glor

The global prayer that motivates the celebration of Biodiversity Day today is a call to stop the loss of biological diversity, that is, the variety of species of plants, animals, and microorganisms that inhabit the planet in its various ecosystems.

Why is this biological variety important? For the United Nations, “biological resources are the pillars that sustain civilizations.” For example?

“Fish provide 20% of animal protein to some 3 billion people. More than 80% of the human diet is made up of plants. Approximately 80% of people living in rural areas of developing countries depend on traditional plant-based medicines for basic health care,” says the agency.

However, an estimated one million animal and plant species are currently endangered.

FLORA IN DANGER

In the DR, for 2011, the List of Endangered, Threatened or Protected Species of the Dominican Republic (Red List) published by the Ministry of the Environment indicated that “of the approximately 6,000 vascular plant species reported for the Dominican Republic, 547 were found to have some category of threat.”

Later, updated data collected in the Red List of Vascular Flora in the Dominican Republic (2016) indicate that some 1,388 plant species present some degree of threat. Some 841 more species than those registered in 2011.

Which of these species are the ones with the highest degree of vulnerability and critical status?

Research indicates that among the families with the highest percentage of their species under some degree of threat are those of orchids (Orchidaceae), palms (Arecaceae), and cacti (Cactaceae).

Indeed, of the orchid family, 145 of the 268 species studied are critically endangered, including the cacatica ( Tolumnia henekenii ) and the Quisqueya rosea.

25 species were included from the palm family (Arecaceae). Of these, there are 13 critically endangered: the red Manacla, Calyptronoma plumeriana; guano: Coccothrinax boschiana; the lake guano: Coccothrinax jimenezii; the guano de costa:Coccothrinax montana Burret; the palm Coccothrinax scoparia Becc; the tame guano: Coccothrinax spissa LH Bailey; el yarey: Copernicia berteroana Becc; the rain palm: Gaussia attenuata; the search Pseudophoenix sargentii H. Wendl; the frisk Pseudophoenix vinífera; the wild coquito: Reinhardtia paiewonskiana; the Thrinax radiata palm and the guaney: Zombia antillarum.

Of the cacti, eight species are critically endangered: the Bánica rose ( Pereskia marcanoi Areces ), the Bayahibe rose ( Pereskia Quisqueyana Alain), the spiny melon ( Melocactus lemairei and Melocactus pedernalensis ), the rose ( Pereskia portulacifolia ), the Melocactus praerupticola Arece s; the pitajaya ( Harrisia nashii Briton ) and the cagüey or avocado ( Dendrocereus undulosus ).

Within the families of compound flowers (Asteráceas), of the 99 analyzed there are 76 in critical condition, among them the Salcedoa mirabaliarum.

Other plants that are listed as critically endangered are three species of conifers (juniper): Juniperus gracilior var. ekmanii, Juniperus gracilior var. gracilior and Juniperus gracilior var. urbaniana and the cross stick (Podocarpus hispaniolensis laubenfels ).

You can see images of species of Dominican flora that is critically endangered in the following gallery: https://listindiario.com/la-vida/2017/08/03/476648/galeria-de-la-flora-dominicana

AND ANIMALS?

The distribution of local fauna is as follows: 483 species of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals; 527 species of marine and freshwater fish and 8,529 species of invertebrates (6,833 terrestrial and 1,696 marine). In total, 9,539 species, according to the 2011 List of Endangered, Threatened or Protected Species of the Dominican Republic (Red List) .

Which are in the worst state of conservation?

Among the critically endangered fish are two types of native grouper, Epinephelus itajara and Epinephelus striatus, and the endemic fish Cyprinodon higuey and Cyprinodon nicholsi.

Amphibians and lizards are among the most vulnerable. About to disappear are the endemic species of the Hispaniola crested toad ( Peltophryne fluviatica ); the Jarabacoa burrowing frog ( Eleutherodactylus bothroboans ); the red-legged frog of La Selle ( Eleutherodactylus furcyensis ); the La Selle brown frog ( Eleutherodactylus jugans ); the southern pastel frog ( Eleutherodactylus leoncei ) and the green spiny frog ( Eleutherodactylus nortoni ).

Also the Neiba telegraph frog ( Eleutherodactylus notidodes ); Neiba’s whistling frog ( Eleutherodactylus parabates ); the Rucilla stream frog ( Eleutherodactylus rucillensis), the Bahoruco red-legged frog ( Eleutherodactylus rufifemoralis ); the northern stream frog ( Eleutherodactylus schmidti ); the Massif du Nord’s whistling frog ( Eleutherodactylus sommeri ) and the Vallejuelo burrowing frog ( Eleutherodactylus tychathrous ).

Among the reptiles, the most threatened are the hawksbill turtle, Eretmochelys imbricata; the giant lucia of Villa Altagracia, Celestus anelpistus; the lucia of Pico Duarte, Celestus marcanoi; the slender Alto Velo anolis (lizard), Anolis altavelensis; the green-banded lizard, Anolis fowleri; the long-nosed lizard from La Selle, Anolis hendersoni; the sturdy red fan lizard, Anolis marcanoi; the Neiba twig lizard, Anolis placidus; the ricord iguana, Cyclura ricordii and the lizard Leiocephalus altavelensis.

Two species of skid lizards also appear in critical condition, Mabuya lineolata (striped skink from Hispaniola) and Mabuya sloanii (greater skink from the Antilles) and thirteen species of geckos or geckos (spherodactyls), all endemic.

Running snakes Haitiophis anomalus, Hypsirhynchus melanichnus, Laltris agyrtes and laltris haetianus; the snakes Mitophis absolepis, Mitophis calypso , Mitophis pyrites and Typhlops syntherus are also almost in critical condition, as is the American crocodile, Crocodylus acutus.

Of the birds, the diablotín ( Pterodroma hasitata ), the Spanish sparrowhawk ( Buteo ridgwayi ), the barb ( Coccyzus rufigularis ) and the owls Asio flammeus and Asio stygius are critically endangered.

The manatee ( Trichechus manatus ) is among the most threatened marine species and, as a curious fact, the solenodon ( Solenodon paradoxus) does not appear in the category of critical danger, but “endangered.”

Article on St. John Lizards

By Jonathan Losos

On May 24, 2020

In All Posts

Getting To Know Your Virgin Island Lizards

Reprinted from the St. John Source

Gail Karlsson

–

May 22, 2020

Crested anoles are curious and not shy. (Source photo by Gail Karlsson)

During the Virgin Islands ‘safer at home’ phase, I have found myself engaging more frequently with my non-human housemates – especially the lizards.

Most days I’ll be working at a table on our screened ground-level porch. The screen door is loose along the bottom, which has allowed a small lizard to come inside and share my work space. It is a Crested Anole (Anolis cristatellus), which has a permanent ridge along its back and tail. (Smaller crested anoles with light stripes on their back are either young, or female.)

Anoles are quiet and mostly eat bugs, which I appreciate. (The name rhymes with ravioli.) They are curious, and not scary or threatening. However, this one sometimes shows aggressive behavior if another anole enters its territory – even if it is on the outside of the screen – by doing push-ups and extending the dewlap under its chin.

Anoles are quite plentiful, and a favorite food for the American Kestrels, and Great Egrets living in the neighborhood. Recently I saw a kestrel blast over and snatch an anole up from the ground just outside the porch in a split-second attack. It definitely would have been safer inside the house.

Kestrels in the Virgin Islands seem to mostly eat anoles. (Source photo by Gail Karlsson)

Outside the front door is a small entry deck, where my husband puts a bowl of kibbles for the neighborhood cats. If they don’t finish it, a Ground Lizard (Ameiva exsul) might stop by to grab a bite. This lizard is sometimes called a ‘skink’ in the Virgin Islands, although that name generally refers to a different, rarer species. The ground lizard is larger and beefier than the anoles, with a snake-like body. It moves very quickly, swinging from side to side, more like a ‘slink’.

A ground lizard came by to eat a few kibbles from the cats’ dish. (Source photo by Gail Karlsson)

There is an old teak chair by the door, which for some reason recently attracted a bright, young Green Iguana. They don’t usually come into the house, though there was that time when my son’s girlfriend came to visit and reached into her suitcase to find an iguana sitting in there. Someone must have left the door open.

A juvenile green iguana came to sit on the outdoor chair. (Source photo by Gail Karlsson)

These iguanas get darker, spiky-backed, and considerably less attractive when they get larger – especially when one decides to take a dip in the pool.

An adult green iguana decided to cool off in the pool. (Source photo by Gail Karlsson)

I had another eek! moment recently when I got out the large pasta pot and something dark was crawling around in it. After I jumped, I realized it was not a gross roach, but a Dwarf Gecko (Sphaerodactylus macrolepus), which some people call a ‘wood slave’. They are nocturnal, and I only seen them occasionally, like when I move a picture frame on the wall and one is sleeping behind there and quickly runs off.

I have never been able to get a good look at one, so I grabbed my camera and took a few shots of this one before it crawled up the side of the pot and hopped out.

The photos turned out to have a surprisingly existential quality, I thought, capturing the general feeling of safer-at-home isolation, confinement and vertigo.

A dwarf gecko was quarantining in the pasta pot. (Source photo by Gail Karlsson)

Gail Karlsson is an environmental lawyer, writer and photographer – author of The Wild Life in an Island House, plus the guide book Learning About Trees and Plants – A Project of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of St. John. See uufstjohn.com/treeproject and gvkarlsson.blogspot.com. Follow her on Instagram @gailkarlsson

Ecomorphological Associations of Scapulocoracoid Form in Greater Antillean Anolis lizards

By Nick Herrmann

On May 22, 2020

In New Lit Abstracts

Find the scapulocoracoid

New literature alert!

In Annals of Anatomy
Tinius, Russell, Jamniczky, and Anderson

Summary

External morphological metrics have featured prominently in comparative studies examining the morphological convergence that characterizes anoline ecomorphs. To what degree the appendicular-skeletal morphology of Greater Antillean island Anolis lizards tracks their diversity and ecological adaptation, however, remains relatively unexplored. Here we employ computed tomographic scanning techniques to visualise in situ the scapulocoracoid of ecomorph representatives (trunk-ground, trunk-crown, crown-giant, twig) from three islands (Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico), and compare its three-dimensional geometry using qualitative-descriptive and quantitative-morphometric techniques. In contrast to our previous, similarly-conducted study of the pelvic girdle of these same species, the form of the scapulocoracoid varies markedly both within and between species, with much of the variation relating to phylogenetic relationship, specimen size, and assigned ecomorph category. Morphometric variation that correlates with size and/or phylogenetic signal varies between species and cannot be eliminated from the data set without markedly reducing its overall variability. The discovered patterns of skeletal variation are consistent with the demands of locomotor mechanics imposed by the structural configuration of the microhabitat of these ecomorphs. Most pertinently the ecomorphs differ in the anteroposterior length of the coracoid, the dorsoventral height of the scapulocoracoid, the dorsoventral height of the scapula in relation to the height of the suprascapula, and the relative positioning of the borders of the scapulocoracoid fenestra. In the examined ecomorph categories these skeletal differences likely relate to microhabitat usage by permitting different degrees of tilting and displacement of the scapulocoracoid in the parasagittal plane and influencing the sizes of muscle origins and the vectors of their actions. These differences relate to the amount of humeral adduction applied during its protraction, and to the structural stability of the shoulder girdle during acrobatic maneuvers, thus influencing the perch diameter that can be effectively negotiated, a critical factor in the microhabitat structure of Anolis ecomorphs.

Read the full paper here!

Sneaking into SoCal: the Brown Anole’s Rapid invasion of Orange County, USA

By Samuel Fisher

On May 21, 2020

In All Posts

By Lelani Del Pinto & Samuel Fisher

Southern California has remained relatively unaffected by invasive reptiles for the past few decades. While there have been few invasive species noted, Californians use of citizen science tools has made it easier to detect novel invasive species. One source of invasive species passage is plant nurseries. Multiple sources studying invasive species across the world have noted they have played a major role in various A. sagrei invasions.

At our sites we found plant nurseries at three out of the five survey locations. Anolis sagrei was first detected during an invasive lizard survey in which we (Lelani Del Pinto and Samuel Fisher) were determining the spread of parthenogenetic whiptails (Aspidoscelis sonorae) from Arizona, when we stumbled upon the unexpected A. sagrei population. A new survey began immediately among a tiny strip mall and not one but approximately 30 A. sagrei were seen.

With a new mission in hand, we next turned to iNaturalist which showed a few scattered records of A. sagrei across Orange County. None of the citizen records were from the strip mall at which we conducted our first survey. Doing a literature search, we found one short note about A. sagrei in California, but no other publications for the state. We established five separate sites based on iNaturalist records as well as the other population we found. After that we surveyed all of the sites and accounted for all of the lizard species seen.

Each site with citizen records proved to have at least a couple of hectares of invaded A. sagrei land. Our methodology was focused on trying to understand the total distance the separate A. sagrei populations had spread; by trying to create a minimum convex polygon, we hoped to get an idea about the minimum size of each of these disjunct populations.

As we were already keeping track of all lizard species we found, we quickly noticed a somewhat problematic trend. It seemed that in localities where A. sagrei was present, the native Sceloporus occidentalis was nowhere to be found. Due to the lack of presence of S. occidentalis in the surveyed sites in which A. sagrei was observed, we think there is reason to pursue further surveying to ensure our native western fence lizard is not threatened by this invader.

While the full extent of the invasion is yet to be determined, further studies could prove the issue is more problematic than anticipated, especially if more A. sagrei come into California and eventually establish through the help of the nursery trade. Secondly any downstream effects caused by invasive A. sagrei should be closely watched because extirpations of S. occidentalis may prove troublesome. Sceloporus occidentalis is known to have an important role in our ecosystem and reduces lyme disease.

The results of our study help to show that within southern California, A. sagrei has the potential to become an invader as it has in many other places such as Florida, Hawaii, and Texas. The impact of the potential A. sagrei invasion in southern California will hopefully be further studied and handled appropriately. We hope you check our paper out to learn the details about where brown anoles have recently spread!

References

Fisher SR, Del Pinto LA, Fisher RN. 2020. Establishment of brown anoles (Anolis sagrei) across a southern California county and potential interactions with a native lizard species. PeerJ 8:e8937 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8937

Mahrdt CR, Ervin EL, Nafis G. 2014. Geographic distribution: Anolis sagrei (Cuban Brown Anole). Herpetological Review 45:658–659.

Hurricane-blown Anoles are a NY Times Cartoon!

By James T. Stroud

On May 20, 2020

In All Posts

Communicating anole science to the public recently reached dizzy new heights as anoles were immortalized in a New York Times cartoon!

“Scientists studying lizards in the Americas found that populations in regions battered by hurricanes have larger toe pads that help them hang on in high wind. It’s proof that extreme weather events can alter the course of a species.” Artist: James Yang

The cartoon was published in relation to a recent study in PNAS investigating how hurricanes may drive the evolution of anole toepads by Colin Donihue et al.

Dewlap Size and Seasonality in Mexican Anoles

By Levi Gray

On May 18, 2020

In All Posts

Figure 1. Some examples of “typical” species found in seasonal and aseasonal environments in Mexico. Please forgive the terrible lighting of the Seasonal photos.

Reprinted from the pages of BioMH: Biology of Mexican Herps:

In 1984, Henry Fitch and David Hillis published a paper on mainland anoles that grabbed my attention decades later as I began my graduate research. In that paper, they described a number of dewlap traits and found that many dewlap scale traits were useful for species identification. They also found an interesting correlation between male dewlap size and habitat type. Species with large male dewlaps were associated with habitats in highly seasonal environments such as deserts and thorn-scrub, while those with small male dewlaps inhabited cloud forests and tropical rainforests (Fig. 1). Why might such an association exist?

Fitch and Hillis proposed a sexual selection hypothesis to explain the pattern. After all, Fitch had previously found decreased sexual size dimorphism (SVL) in anole species associated with stable environments such as cloud forests and rainforests (1976). One interpretation of this pattern is that the intensity of sexual selection is reduced in species that can breed throughout the year, decreasing body size dimorphism between the sexes. Fitch and Hillis also found increased body size dimorphism in species that had large dewlaps and lived in seasonal environments (1984). Since anoles living in highly seasonal environments can have shortened breeding seasons linked to precipitation (Fleming & Hooker 1973), the Fitch-Hillis Hypothesis posits that constraints in length of the breeding season increases male dewlap size due to strengthened sexual selection (1984).

Using new datasets for Mexican anoles, we re-investigated support for the Fitch-Hillis Hypothesis at two scales. We performed “macro” analyses across over 40 Mexican anole species and also looked at the Anolis sericeus group, the only group that occurs broadly throughout seasonal and aseasonal habitat types. In our study, we were able to do two important things differently than the original study. The first is that we were able to treat seasonality as a continuous variable thanks to modern GIS tools and environmental data (Hijmans et al. 2005), enabling a finer-scale look at the link between male dewlap size and seasonality. The original study treated seasonality as a categorical variable (“seasonal” vs “aseasonal”). The second difference is that we were able to correct for phylogenetic non-independence of species. To put it simply, species may be similar in dewlap size due to relatedness to other species (evolutionary history) rather than to the seasonality environment they inhabit. To do this, we used a recently-published phylogeny (Poe et al. 2017) and phylogenetic regression (PGLS) to verify the results of the previous study.

Interestingly enough, our standard ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses duplicated results from the original study; without accounting for evolutionary history, there is indeed a strong correlation between male dewlap size and seasonality in Mexican anoles (Fig. 2A, black line). Being able to replicate results using different datasets and approaches is very important and not as common as many of us scientists would like. However, as reflected in the more flattened red dotted line in the figure below, the correlation is weakened substantially after accounting for phylogeny. We therefore cannot say with confidence that seasonality affects male dewlap size in Mexican anoles.

Figure 2. Regression results from Gray et al. (2020). (A) Results from our “macro” analyses, with black line representing standard OLS regression results and red dotted line representing the PGLS results. (B) Results for the Anolis sericeus complex, with black line representing results for all three major lineages and red dotted line representing results of the Pacific and Caribbean lineages. See paper for further details or please ask questions in the comment section below!

We were not able to perform phylogenetic regressions on the Anolis sericeus complex, unfortunately. Though several of us published a phylogeographic study on the silky anoles, many populations represented in the dewlap dataset were not included in that work (Gray et al. 2019). Therefore we had to come up with another way to investigate a correlation in silky anoles. Our phylogeographic work discovered three clades which we assigned Pacific, Caribbean, and Yucatan. Incidentally, the Yucatan lineage is diagnosed in part by small male dewlap size (Lara-Tufiño et al. 2016). The Yucatan lineage also occurs in relatively aseasonal environments that fall within the conditions inhabited by the Caribbean lineage (Gray et al. 2020). So after running regressions on all populations (Fig. 2B, black line), we also ran regressions on only the Pacific and Caribbean lineages, which collectively experience the broadest range of seasonality environments (Gray et al. 2020). As you can see in the figure above, removing the Yucatan lineage flattens the regression line and makes it clear the correlation between male dewlap size and seasonality in silky anoles is influenced by phylogenetic history (Fig. 2B, red dotted line).

Does this mean seasonality is not a driver of male dewlap size? Not necessarily. We discuss other possibilities in the paper, including that anole lineages in Mexico may not have “switched” environments enough for us to be able to detect an effect. We found strong phylogenetic signal for seasonality in Mexican anoles, suggesting species from lineages preferring seasonal environments do not often switch to aseasonal environments and vice versa. As an example, one lineage of 14 west Mexican anoles consists of species that tend to have large dewlaps and live in seasonal environments. In that clade, having a large dewlap might be traceable to one evolutionary event when the most recent common ancestor of the clade evolved a large dewlap. Sexual selection and a truncated breeding season might have had something to do with that event…or the ancestor may have evolved a large dewlap for other reasons and extant species maintained the trait.

While the final result may not be super exciting, I enjoyed working on this project. Collectively, I spent about one year in Mexico catching lizards during grad school and our sample size for some species still left a lot to be desired. Datasets like this take a lot of time and effort to generate! A lot of friends and collaborators helped find and photograph animals through the years. I want to thank Adam Clause, Luke Mahler, Eric Schaad, and Britt White for taking some of the best dewlap photos in our collection.

If anyone wants to play around with the data, they are available at Dryad. And the paper is open access and short, so check it out!

References

Fitch HS (1976) Sexual differences in the mainland anoles. Occasional papers of the Museum of Natural History, the University of Kansas, 50:1-21.

Fitch HS, DM Hillis (1984) The Anolis dewlap: Interspecific variability and morphological associations with habitat. Copeia, 1984:315-323.

Fleming TH, RS Hooker (1973) Anolis cupreus: the response of a lizard to tropical seasonality. Ecology, 56:1243-1261.

Gray LN, AJ Barley, S Poe, RC Thomson, A Nieto-Montes de Oca, IJ Wang (2019) Phylogeography of a widespread lizard complex reflects patterns of both geographic and ecological isolation. Molecular Ecology, 28:644-657.

Gray LN, AJ Barley, DM Hillis, CJ Pavón-Vázquez, S Poe, BA White (2020) Does breeding season variation affect evolution of a sexual signaling trait in a tropical lizard clade? Ecology and Evolution, 10:3738-3746.

Hijmans RJ, SE Cameron, JL Parra, PG Jones, A Jarvis (2005) Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology, 25:1965-1978.

Lara-Tufiño JD, A Nieto-Montes de Oca, A Ramírez-Bautista, LN Gray (2016) Resurrection of Anolis ustus Hallowell, 1856 (Squamata, Dactyloidae). Zookeys, 2016:147-162.

Poe S, A Nieto-Montes de Oca, O Torres-Carvajal, K de Queiroz, JA Velasco, B Truett, LN Gray, MJ Ryan, G Kohler, F Ayala-Varela, I Latella (2017) A phylogenetic, biogeographic, and taxonomic study of all extant species of Anolis (Squamata: Iguanidae). Systematic Biology, 66:663-697.

Helminths Associated with Anolis fuscoauratus in Highland Marshes of the Brazilian Semi-Arid Region

By Nick Herrmann

On May 16, 2020

In New Lit Abstracts

New literature alert!

In Journal of Helminthology
dos Santos Mesquita, de Oliveira, Perez, and Ávila

Abstract

Helminthological studies may contribute with valuable information on host biology and conservation. Herein, we provide new data on helminths infecting the lizard Norops fuscoauratus, testing one of the factors considered most important in parasitic ecology: host size. We analysed 25 specimens of N. fuscoauratus from three highland marshes in the Brazilian semi-arid. Eight taxa of helminths belonging to Nematoda, Trematoda and Acanthocephala were found. Physaloptera sp. showed the higher prevalence (40%), with a mean intensity of infection of 3.3 ± 1.46 (1–16) and mean abundance 1.32 ± 0.65 (0–16). Norops fuscoauratus represents four new host records for the helminths Cyrtosomum sp., Pharyngodon travassosi, Strongyloides sp. and Centrorhynchus sp. There is no relationship of host body size (P = 0.79) and mass (P = 0.50) with parasite richness. In addition, the present study contributes to the knowledge of the parasitic fauna of N. fuscoauratus and the Neotropical region.

Read the full article here!

Free Online Course: Landscaping for Lizards

By Nick Herrmann

On May 15, 2020

In All Posts

On Wednesday, May 20 at 4:00PM EDT, the University of Florida IFAS Extension Service is hosting a free online course! Here’s the event description from the website.

Learn about how you can landscape for lizards! We will cover many of the species you may see in Northeast Florida, the many benefits to having them around, and what you can do you in landscape and garden to support and protect them.

This is a free online course but registration through Eventbrite is required and the class is limited in size to 80 participants.

The cover photo for the event features a green anole (Anolis carolinensis, also pictured above), so expect some discussion of our beloved anoles. If you attend, please comment below and let us know what you learned!

You can register for the course here.

Anoles Love It When Ant and Termite Nests Get Opened

By Jonathan Losos

On May 14, 2020

In All Posts

Lepidoterist and keen naturalist Andrei Sourakov from the Florida State Museum posted this photo on Twitter.

This is actually an effective, if somewhat mean to the little insects, way of watching anoles, as Stan Rand noted in his 1975 paper of A. agassizi: “In the West Indies, a well-established method for attracting large numbers of anoles is to break open a termite nest. Under such conditions, large numbers will often gather and feed actively with little aggressive interaction.”

Another Great Anole Journal Cover!

By James T. Stroud

On May 13, 2020

In All Posts

Another one bites the dust for Team Anole! The cover image of the most recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is a beautiful green anole (Anolis carolinensis), which accompanies a study in the same issue investigating the evolutionary effects of hurricanes on anole toepads by Colin Donihue et al.

Congrats too to Neil Losin for taking this fabulous photo!

Donihue, C.M., Kowaleski, A.M., Losos, J.B., Algar, A.C., Baeckens, S., Buchkowski, R.W., Fabre, A.C., Frank, H.K., Geneva, A.J., Reynolds, R.G., Stroud, J.T., Velasco, J.A., Kolbe, J.J., Mahler, D.M., Herrel, A. 2020. Hurricane effects on Neotropical lizards span geographic and phylogenetic scales. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117 (19): 10429-10434