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Publications (399)
Introductions of invasive species to new environments often result in rapid rates of trait evolution. While in some cases these evolutionary transitions are adaptive and driven by natural selection, they can also result from non-adaptive processes associated with the invasion history. Here, we examined the role of adaptive and non-adaptive evolutio...
Assemblages of co‐occurring closely related species tend to vary in one or more niche dimensions, but niche partitioning also occurs at levels of biological organization above and below the species level. Niche space occupied by a community may involve variation among groups of species, such as guilds or ecomorphs, and among sexes or individuals wi...
Animal signals evolve in an ecological context. Locally adapting animal sexual signals can be especially important for initiating or reinforcing reproductive isolation during the early stages of speciation. Previous studies have demonstrated that dewlap colour in Anolis lizards can be highly variable between populations in relation to both biotic a...
Oceanic islands are known as test tubes of evolution. Isolated and colonized by relatively few species, islands are home to many of nature’s most renowned radiations from the finches of the Galápagos to the silverswords of the Hawaiian Islands. Despite the evolutionary exuberance of insular life, island occupation has long been thought to be irreve...
Hybridization is among the evolutionary mechanisms most frequently hypothesized to drive the success of invasive species, in part because hybrids are common in invasive populations. One explanation for this pattern is that biological invasions coincide with a change in selection pressures that limit hybridization in the native range. To investigate...
Rapid technological improvements are democratizing access to high quality, chromosome-scale genome assemblies. No longer the domain of only the most highly studied model organisms, now non-traditional and emerging model species can be genome-enabled using a combination of sequencing technologies and assembly software. Consequently, old ideas built...
Describing the relationships among morphology, behavior, and ecology is central to understanding the processes of evolutionary diversification. Anolis lizards are an excellent group for studying such ecomorphological relationships. Extensive research on anole ecological morphology has been conducted in the Caribbean, where sympatric species have re...
Mating behavior in animals can be understood as a sequence of events that begins with individuals encountering one another and ends with the production of offspring. Behavioral descriptions of animal interactions characterize early elements of this sequence, and genetic descriptions use offspring parentage to characterize the final outcome, with be...
Tropical ectotherms are thought to be especially vulnerable to climate change because they are thermal specialists, having evolved in aseasonal thermal environments. However, even within the tropics, habitat structure can influence opportunities for behavioral thermoregulation. Open (and edge) habitats likely promote more effective thermoregulation...
The G matrix, which quantifies the genetic architecture of traits, is often viewed as an evolutionary constraint. However, G can evolve in response to selection and may also be viewed as a product of adaptive evolution. The evolution of similar G matrices in similar environments would suggest that G evolves adaptively, but it is difficult to disent...
If fitness optima for a given trait differ between males and females in a population, sexual dimorphism may evolve. Sex-biased trait variation may affect patterns of habitat use, and if the microhabitats used by each sex have dissimilar microclimates, this can drive sex-specific selection on thermal physiology. Nevertheless, tests of differences be...
Ecological release, originally conceived as niche expansion following a reduction
in interspecific competition, may prompt invasion success, morphological
evolution, speciation, and other ecological and evolutionary outcomes. However,
the concept has not been recently reviewed. Here, we trace the study of ‘ecological release’ from its inception thr...
Extreme climate events are predicted to increase in frequency and severity due to contemporary climate change. Recent studies have documented the evolutionary impacts of extreme events on single species, but no studies have yet investigated whether such events can drive community-wide patterns of trait shifts. On 22 January 2020, subtropical south...
Extreme climate events such as droughts, cold snaps, and hurricanes can be powerful agents of natural selection, producing acute selective pressures very different from the everyday pressures acting on organisms. However, it remains unknown whether these infrequent but severe disruptions are quickly erased by quotidian selective forces, or whether...
Invasive species are a worldwide threat to biodiversity. Yet, our understanding of biological invasions remains incomplete, partly due to the difficulty of tracking and studying behavioral interactions in recently created species interactions. We tested whether the interactions between the recently introduced invasive lizard Anolis cristatellus and...
There are many compelling examples of molecular convergence at individual genes. However, the prevalence and the relative importance of adaptive genome-wide convergence remains largely unknown. Many recent works have reported striking examples of excess genome-wide convergence, but some of these studies have been called into question because of the...
Some of the most important insights into the ecological and evolutionary processes of diversification and speciation have come from studies of island adaptive radiations, yet relatively little research has examined how these radiations initiate. We suggest that Anolis sagrei (the brown anole) is a candidate for understanding the origins of the Cari...
Understanding the origins and early stages of diversification is one of the most elusive tasks in adaptive radiation research. Classical approaches, which aim to infer past processes from present-day patterns of biological diversity, are fraught with difficulties and assumptions. An alternative approach has been to study young clades of relatively...
In polygynous lizards, malemale competition is an important driver of morphologic and behavioral traits associated with intraspecific dominance. The extent to which females engage in aggressive behavior and thus contribute to competition-driven morphologic variation is not well studied. We used injury frequencies of brown anoles (Anolis sagrei) in...
1.Patterns of convergent evolution in head shape, combined with performance measures, provide ideal opportunities to understand the processes driving its evolution. Anole lizards represent an excellent subject to test this, as recurrent habitat specialists or ecomorphs evolved independently across different islands. 2.We show that phenotypic simila...
Biological invasions are both a pressing environmental challenge and an opportunity to investigate fundamental ecological processes, such as the role of top predators in regulating biodiversity and food-web structure. In whole-ecosystem manipulations of small Caribbean islands on which brown anole lizards (Anolis sagrei) were the native top predato...
A recent study showed that hurricanes can act as selective agents affecting the phenotype of anole populations subjected to these extreme climatic events. Specifically, Anolis lizards that survived hurricanes were shown to have larger toepads than those that did not. To test whether hurricanes more generally impact populations of Anolis lizards, we...
The skin surface structure of squamate reptiles varies greatly among species, likely because it plays a key role in a range of tasks, such as camouflage, locomotion, self‐cleaning, mitigation of water loss and protection from physical damage. Although we have foundational knowledge about squamate skin morphology, we still know remarkably little abo...
Experimental studies of evolution performed in nature and the associated demonstration of rapid evolution, observable on a time scale of months to years, were an acclaimed novelty in the 1980–1990s. Contemporary evolution is now considered ordinary and is an integrated feature of many areas of research. This shift from extraordinary to ordinary ref...
It had been nearly a decade since the previous Anolis symposium was held in Cambridge,
MA, at the Museum for Comparative Zoology, Harvard. A reunion of anole biologists en masse was long past due and it was decided that this symposium would be slightly different – we were going to hold it somewhere with anoles! And so, on the weekend of 17-18th Mar...
The ability of an animal to run fast has important consequences on its survival capacity and overall fitness. Previous studies have documented how variation in the morphology of the limbs is related to variation in locomotor performance. Although these studies have suggested direct relations between sprint speed and hindlimb morphology, few quantit...
Urban ecosystems are rapidly expanding throughout the world, but how urban growth affects the evolutionary ecology of species living in urban areas remains largely unknown. Urban ecology has advanced our understanding of how the development of cities and towns changes environmental conditions and alters ecological processes and patterns. However, d...
Historical processes display some degree of “contingency,” meaning their outcomes are sensitive to seemingly inconsequential events that can fundamentally change the future. Contingency is what makes historical outcomes unpredictable. Unlike many other natural phenomena, evolution is a historical process. Evolutionary change is often driven by the...
We report the discovery of a new genus and species of amber-preserved lizard from the mid-Cretaceous of Myanmar. The fossil is one of the smallest and most complete Cretaceous lizards ever found, preserving both the articulated skeleton and remains of the muscular system and other soft tissues. Despite its completeness, its state of preservation ob...
Species invasions may drive native species to extinction. Yet, the role of competition with a closely related native species in the establishment success of an invasive species remains poorly understood. Indeed, opportunities to study native-invasive competition in action are rare, especially at the very first stages of the invasion. We studied the...
Hurricanes are catastrophically destructive. Beyond their toll on human life and livelihoods, hurricanes have tremendous and often long-lasting effects on ecological systems1,2. Despite many examples of mass mortality events following hurricanes3-5, hurricane-induced natural selection has not previously been demonstrated. Immediately after we finis...
Table S1. Additive genetic (co)variance matrices (G) for seven Anolis species.
Table S2. Size‐corrected species means and divergence matrix.
Table S3. Divergence matrix for 15 Anolis species using traits measured in wild‐caught adult males.
Table S4. Krzanowski's common subspace analysis.
Table S5. Genetic covariance tensor analysis.
Table S6....
In a paper titled The erratic and contingent progression of research on territoriality: a case study (Kamath and Losos 2017, Behav Ecol Sociobiol 71:89), we sought to understand the inconsistency between behavioral and genetic descriptions of Anolis lizards’ mating system. We argued that “a potentially important reason for such inconsistencies is a...
On microevolutionary timescales, adaptive evolution depends upon both natural selection and the underlying genetic architecture of traits under selection, which may constrain evolutionary outcomes. Whether such genetic constraints shape phenotypic diversity over macroevolutionary timescales is more controversial, however. One key prediction is that...
Invasive species are a global threat to biodiversity. Cases where the invasion has been tracked since its beginning are rare, however, such that the first interactions between invasive and native species remain poorly understood. Communication behavior is an integral part of species identity and is subject to selection. Consequently, resource use a...
Table S1 and S2.
Table S1. Raw data of the proportion of time spent displaying and the proportion of display-time spent dewlapping for tested male Anolis oculatus and A. cristatellus in allopatry and sympatry (Calibishie, Dominica 2016). All displays were categorized as either dewlap or push-up displays; our metric (“proportion_display_time_ spent_...
Biologists have long debated the role of behavior in evolution, yet understanding of its role as a driver of adaptation is hampered by the scarcity of experimental studies of natural selection on behavior in nature. After showing that individual Anolis sagrei lizards vary consistently in risk-taking behaviors, we experimentally established populati...
Understanding the mechanisms that produce variation in thermal performance is a key component to investigating climatic effects on evolution and adaptation. However, disentangling the effects of local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity in shaping patterns of geographic variation in natural populations can prove challenging. Additionally, the phys...
How individuals move through their environment dictates which other individuals they encounter, determining their social and reproductive interactions and the extent to which they experience sexual selection. Specifically, females rarely have the option of mating with all males in a population-they can only choose among the males they encounter. Fu...
How individuals move through their environment dictates which other individuals they encounter, determining their social and reproductive interactions and the extent to which they experience sexual selection. Specifically, females rarely have the option of mating with all males in a population—they can only choose among the males they encounter. Fu...
Species invasions are a global scourge. Nonetheless, they provide the appropriate evolutionary setting to rigorously test the role that interspecific competition plays in species evolution. The process of ecological character displacement, in which species diverge in sympatry to minimize resource use overlap, is one example. Here, we examine whethe...
The role of behavior in evolution has long been discussed, with some arguing that behavior promotes evolution by exposing organisms to selection (behavioral drive) and others proposing that it inhibits evolution by shielding organisms from environmental variation (behavioral inertia). However, this discussion has generally focused on the effects of...
Anolis lizards are a model system for the study of adaptive radiation and convergent evolution. Greater Antillean anoles have repeatedly evolved six similar forms or ecomorphs: crown-giant, grass-bush, twig, trunk, trunk-crown and trunk ground. Members of each ecomorph category possess a specific set of morphological, ecological and behavioural cha...
Only a handful of multi-generational experiments in natural systems of eco-evolutionary dynamics currently exist, despite Fussmann et al.'s call for more such studies nearly a decade ago. To perform such a study, in 2008 we introduced the lizard Leiocephalus carinatus, a predator (and possible food competitor) of the lizard Anolis sagrei, to seven...
Extreme environmental perturbations offer opportunities to observe the effects of natural selection in wild populations. During the winter of 2013–2014, the southeastern United States endured an extreme cold event. We used thermal performance, transcriptomics, and genome scans to measure responses of lizard populations to storm-induced selection. W...
Aim
We examine the influence of fluctuating sea levels in a land‐bridge archipelago on the apportioning of intraspecific genetic diversity and divergence in the widespread Puerto Rican crested anole (Anolis cristatellus). We compare three alternative scenarios for genetic diversification in an archipelagic species that contrast the relative influen...
Human-mediated dispersal has reshaped distribution patterns and biogeographic relationships for many taxa. Long-distance and over-water dispersal were historically rare events for most species, but now human activities can move organisms quickly over long distances to new places. A potential consequence of human-mediated dispersal is the eventual r...
Our understanding of animal mating systems has changed dramatically with the advent of molecular methods to determine individuals’ reproductive success. But why are older behavioral descriptions and newer genetic descriptions of mating systems often seemingly inconsistent? We argue that a potentially important reason for such inconsistencies is a r...
We examined asymmetry in the color of the dewlap of Anolis lineatus from Curacao. We confirmed previous reports that one side of the dewlap appears more yellow in color than the other and, contrary to previous work, demonstrate a directional bias such that the left side is usually the more yellow side. At one site surveyed twice in 3.5 years, the p...
Our understanding of animal mating systems has changed dramatically with the advent of molecular methods to determine individuals’ reproductive success. But why are older behavioral descriptions and newer genetic descriptions of mating systems often seemingly inconsistent? We argue that a potentially important reason for such inconsistencies is a r...
Anolis lizards are a model system for the study of adaptive radiation and convergent evolution. Greater Antillean anoles have repeatedly evolved six similar forms or ecomorphs: crown-giant, grass-bush, twig, trunk, trunk-crown, and trunk-ground. Members of each ecomorph category possess a specific set of morphological, ecological and behavioural ch...
Phenotypic traits may be linked to speciation in two distinct ways: character values may influence the rate of speciation or diversification in the trait may be associated with speciation events. Traits involved in signal transmission, such as the dewlap of Anolis lizards, are often involved in the speciation process. The dewlap is an important vis...
Ecological specialization is common across all levels of biological organization, raising the question of whether the evolution of specialization at one scale in a taxon is linked to specialization at other scales. Anolis lizards have diversified repeatedly along axes of habitat use, but it remains unknown if this diversification into habitat use s...
The process of adaptive radiation—the proliferation of species from a single ancestor and diversification into many ecologically different forms—has been of great interest to evolutionary biologists since Darwin. From the middle of the last century, ecological opportunity has been invoked as a potential key to understanding when and how adaptive ra...
Context
Urban landscapes are a mixture of built structures, human-altered vegetation, and remnant semi-natural areas. The spatial arrangement of abiotic and biotic conditions resulting from urbanization doubtless influences the establishment and spread of non-native species in a city.
Objectives
We investigated the effects of habitat structure, the...
Dorsal patterning in animals can serve as an antipredator defence and may be involved in sexual selection, and is thus likely to be the target of multiple selective forces. Intraspecific variation in dorsal patterning is not rare, but the reasons behind it are poorly understood. Anolis lizards offer an ideal system to test for a role of ecological...
Long-distance colonization was once rare causing species within regions to be closely related. Now, in the Anthropocene, biogeographic structure is being eroded by species introductions. Here, we contrast the ecology and evolution of native versus exotic Caribbean Anolis lizards and show that the once strong biogeographic structure in the clade has...
Climate-mediated evolution plays an integral role in species migration and range expansion. Gaining a clearer understanding of how climate affects demographic history and adaptation provides fundamental insight into the generation of intra- and interspecific diversity. In this study we used the natural colonization of the green anole (Anolis caroli...
We report a new chameleon-like Anolis species from Hispaniola that is ecomorphologically similar to congeners found only on Cuba. Lizards from both clades possess short limbs and a short tail and utilize relatively narrow perches, leading us to recognize a novel example of ecomorphological matching among islands in the well-known Greater Antillean...
The green anole, Anolis carolinensis, has long been an important model organism for studies of physiology and behaviour, and recently became the first reptile to have its genome sequenced. With a large and environmentally heterogeneous distribution, especially in relation to well-studied Antillean relatives, A. carolinensis is also emerging as an i...
Performance measures associated with the vertebrate jaw system may provide important insights into vertebrate ecology and evolution because of their importance in many ecologically relevant tasks. Previous studies have shown that in many taxa, evolution toward higher bite force has gone hand in hand with the evolution of larger body size. However,...