We are starting 2025 off on a high note. Katherine Starr's paper on Anolis head evolution was recently published in Scientific Reports. For me, it also broke a 10 years hiatus from collaborating with my good friend Emma Sherratt. We started staring at anoles together as post docs. shorturl.at/1PGKy - ThreadSky

thomsanger.bsky.social • 53 days ago

We are starting 2025 off on a high note. Katherine Starr's paper on Anolis head evolution was recently published in Scientific Reports. For me, it also broke a 10 years hiatus from collaborating with my good friend Emma Sherratt. We started staring at anoles together as post docs.
https://shorturl.at/1PGKy

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windsor-aguirre.bsky.social•53 days ago

Congratulations, Thom! Great way to start the new year. I hope you have a wonderful 2025. Please give my best to all.

thomsanger.bsky.social•53 days ago

Same to you! Let's find a time to meet up for a coffee later in the winter.

windsor-aguirre.bsky.social•53 days ago

Sounds good, will look forward to it!

thomsanger.bsky.social•53 days ago

Anolis is a textbook example of an adaptive radiation, but the vast majority of attention has focused on the body. Not nearly as much is known about the diversity of the head and how it correlates with differences in the ecology of these lizards.

thomsanger.bsky.social•53 days ago

Katherine was curious whether the heads of arboreal Anolis lizards looked different and evolved differently compared to the head of their terrestrial relatives.

thomsanger.bsky.social•53 days ago

Using geometric morphometrics, Katherine found that anoles have a relatively elongate heads with a low profile compared to that of their relatives. A fairly dramatic shift in head shape occurred when anoles evolved an arboreal lifestyle.

thomsanger.bsky.social•53 days ago

Anoles also occupy more morphological space (disparity) than their relatives, but they didn't accomplish this by speeding up the evolution of their head shape. Rather, anoles reached these high levels of diversity by making relatively large transitions across morphological space as they diversified.

thomsanger.bsky.social•53 days ago

There are many "how" and "why" questions that Katherine's findings raise. She hypothesizes that the large transitions may reflect the repeated convergence of anoles on the different Caribbean islands. Our previous research showed that some habitat specialists converge on similar head shapes.

thomsanger.bsky.social•53 days ago

She also observed that Anolis and Polychrus, the only other arboreal species in her sampling, converge on relatively similar head shapes. This suggests that there is a something about the arboreal habitat that may lead to lizards with an elongate, low profile head.

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