Really excited to announce that I will be starting a faculty position at
@GeorgiaTech
@GTSciences
in August! My lab will continue to work on the evolutionary ecology of lizards: grad students & postdocs please get in touch!🦎🦎🦎🐝
Extremely honoured, overwhelmed, & taken aback to have been awarded a 2021
@ASNAmNat
young investigator award. A huge compliment given the incredible list of past awardees who comprise many of my scientific heroes! 🦎🦎🦎
Do flying insects face an even greater extinction risk with climate change?
The energetic costs of flight increase with elevation.
Result: flying insects migrate upslope slower than non-fliers!
🦋↗️🏔️=👎
🐜↗️🏔️=👍
@moore_evo_eco
@GTBiology
@Nature
Bird's wings, horse's teeth, and lizard's sticky toes:
What are (evolutionary) key innovations, and why is ecology important?
New paper in
@Trends_Ecol_Evo
led by
@AryehHMiller
w/
@JLosos
- let us know if you need a pdf!
Come and do your Biology PhD at
@GTBiology
! I am proud of my department for both recognising and acting on(!!) our graduate student salaries and how they reflect rising cost of living.
Reach out if you're interested in evolutionary ecology, community ecology, or lizards 🦎🦎🦎
I am delighted that
@GeorgiaTech
@GTSciences
is committed to raising PhD stipends. This is absolutely the right thing to do given the increasing cost of living.
This was a huge win from our Dean, Susan Lozier.
Its been overwhelming to read all of the support from this thread!
While riding this wave 🏄 : I'm looking for 1-2 postdocs to start in mid-late 2024 (timing negotiable)
If this PNAS paper (or any of my research) interests you then please get in touch!
Loving my first 3D print of an anole skull! This is a Puerto Rican crested anole (Anolis cristatellus) - one of the primary species I did PhD research on. I love it! Thanks for the CTscan file
@DrScanley
@davidcblackburn
@danpaluh
- whoever did this one! 🦎🦎🦎
@FloridaMuseum
Not only are these green blooded weirdos, but they are also the only non-anole and non-gecko lizards to have toepads! I would love to see these in Papua 🦎🦎🦎 look at that mouth! Look at that pattern!
#mydays
Skink of the Week: Prehensile Green Tree Skink (Prasinohaema prehensicauda). Occurs in the the central highlands regions of Papua New Guinea. Has green blood!! Photo: Fred Kraus.
In starting my new lab
@GTBiology
, I now realise that I never twitter-thanked my home for the past 5 years with
@JLosos
. Lots of amazing people in this photograph; thanks for everything! 🦎🦎🦎
I love that my new home has beautiful lizards literally straight outside the door to my office building! I can't wait for on-campus research projects 🤩🦎🦎🦎
@GTSciences
FALLING IGUANAS: Be prepared for stunned iguanas as overnight lows drop down to the mid-upper 30s! When you factor in the wind chill, it will feel at OR BELOW FREEZING! Bundle up & be sure your furry friends are inside & warm as well.
#miami
#ftlauderdale
What is ecological release?
In our new
@Trends_Ecol_Evo
paper, led by Nick Herrmann and w/
@JLosos
, we review the concept of 'ecological release': - a term widely & variably used to describe niche expansion, but one with major evolutionary implications
During a cold snap in southern Florida in January, residents were warned to watch out for falling lizards.
Scientists sought to understand how lizards are affected by extreme climate events and found they're more adaptable than the researchers thought.
The big freeze has hit Miami! When temperatures drop below a critical limit allowing lizards to function...sleeping lizards lose grip & drop out of trees. To an evolutionary biologist: natural selection in action?
Thanks for pic
@BrettinFlorida
!
#scicomm
#FloridaWinter
#Florida
Un fascinante cardúmen de peces gato (Plotosus lineatus), son juveniles aprox 100 individuos y les sirve para protegerse de los depredadores, noten que los que están arriba descienden hasta llegar al piso y alimentarse.
#ocean
#ClimateChange
#fish
via
@Jamesdonovan45
More importantly, here are some of the wonderful and brilliant people that nominated me! I have no doubt all of these colleagues will be the future of ecology and evolution 🦎🦎🦎
Thank you all 🙌From L-R:
@jhancsalazar
@AryehHMiller
@AnsleyPetherick
Lauren Johnson
@bansal_udita
I am honoured to be talking in the
@ASNAmNat
Young Investigator award symposium at 6pm EST today! Come along if you're interested in seeing how natural selection may act to maintain the structure of entire communities and also see some cool fitness landscapes🦎🦎🦎
#Evol2021
In Florida, genetic analysis reveals that invasive Madagascan day geckos (Phelsuma grandis) and SE Asian Tokay geckos (Gekko gecko) are likely the result of multiple independent introductions!
Cool paper from Tommy Fieldsend's PhD work 🦎🦎🦎
Always an honour getting a journal cover...but even better when's it's such a beautiful lizard!
Anolis grahami in Kingston, Jamaica 🦎🦎🦎🇯🇲
Thanks
@Trends_Ecol_Evo
- was a great experience as always with
@AryehHMiller
and
@JLosos
🔐
February issue of TREE out now
Cover article is Miller et al which discusses Key Innovations, including Anolis toepads
Featured articles by Peres et al,
@kristinebohmann
&
@lynggaardc
, Rattenborg & Ungurean
Ummm...what's that now?! The world's first known venomous frogs...toxins more potent than Bothrops...delivered via hidden spines in their top lips...still look like other cryptic hylids. So. Many. Questions. 🤯🤯🤯🐸 Also, way to go Brazilian herpos!! 💯🤘
Despite this book coming out 2 years before I was born (and this copy being purchased when I was 5!) - Schwartz & Henderson still leads the way in outrageously beautiful plates of Anolis heads. Aren't we due some new ones?!
@AnoleAnnals
#scicomm
Another glorious male brown anole at
@FairchildGarden
- I managed to nab him while he had his attention focussed on fighting another male, hence the erect crests. In fact, despite me holding him he's still looking at the other lizard 🦎🦎🦎
#fightclub
This week in Science: using big data to understand the ecology of animal movement, new insights on the peopling of the Americas, and how lizards rapidly shed their tails to escape predators.
Check out our latest issue ➡
No grad school application fees and one of the best stipend cost of living readjustments in the country -- come join us
@GTBiology
!! It's a great place to do your PhD
🧪🦎🦜🦴🪸🐟and more!
Paying money to apply to grad school is whack.
@QBioS_GT
is waiving all application fees for eligible students (email admissions
@qbios
.gatech.edu for instructions on how to get a waiver prior to submitting your application). DM me if you have questions!
And the march back towards valuing natural history observations continues! And nowhere needs documenting these types of notes more than the tropics! 🦎🦎🦎
The Blue Mountains Anole, Anolis reconditus. The rarest anole species on Jamaica and restricted to small range of montane forest around Blue Mountains National Park 🙌🙌🙌
First time night
#herping
for these
@WUSTLBio
students - highlight of the night was this baby knight anole (Anolis equestris). Highly unusual to find any lizards so small this time of year but we have seen it for most species. Looks like it was a mild Winter...
@WUSTL
@JLosos
5 years since we discovered that Cuban knight anoles (Anolis equestris) -- a member of the fearsome, predatory 'Crown-Giant' ecomorph class -- actually eat a lot of fruit and even disperse palm tree seeds!
It's here! The new
@HarperCollins
book "The Lizard Scientists: Studying evolution in action" by
@DogWriterDoro
- introducing elementary and middle school students to lizard scientists and their research (+ incredible photography from
@DaysEdge
) 🦎🦎🦎
5 years ago this week since the last Anolis Symposium which I hosted in Miami FL at
@FairchildGarden
-- hoping one day to do it again!! 🦎🦎🦎 Tons of great people there who I haven't had a chance to see again in person since! 🦎
Good first hour at Discovery Bay Marine Lab in Jamaica - managed to find all 3 species I was hoping for; lineatopus, grahami, and valencienni!
@AnoleAnnals
🦎🦎🦎
Finally...
I am flying home after 11.5 weeks of fieldwork in the past 13 weeks. Caught, measured, and tagged >1,900 lizards of 14 species in 4 countries. Would have been impossible without the world's greatest colleagues ==
@JonJSuh
@QuietWarriors
@PutterT
@stgiery
🦎🦎 🇺🇲🇯🇲🇩🇴🇧🇸
Fantastic photo by
@neillosin
of a Miami green anole was awarded cover image for the
@PNASNews
issue containing our paper investigating the evolutionary effects of hurricanes on lizards.
@colindonihue
storming 🌪️ through the field of evolutionary biology:
Interesting opinion piece from Geerat Vermeij on understanding how adaptive evolution plays out as a process in the wild.
When Does Natural Selection Take Place?
On my way back to Jamaica 🇯🇲 with
@JonJSuh
so he can take photos like these (!) and we can🤞discover something fascinating! 🤫 🦎🦎🦎🦎
@AnoleAnnals
#scicomm
Anolis Newsletter VII is finally out!! Thank you to all the wonderful anole biologists who submitted contributions to this edition. I might be biased, but I think it's the best one yet! Open access here: 🦎
#scicomm
#science
#evolution
#ecology
#STEM
🦎🦎
Photographing Jamaica's rarest Anole lizard, the Blue Mountains anole (Anolis reconditus). Only discovered in 1959 and restricted to a small range in the Blue Mountains, not much is known about the ecology of this (beautiful) lizard
@NatGeo
@NatGeoEducation
#scicomm
#wildlife
🦎
Integrating biogeography is critical to understanding patterns of niche dynamics in invasive species.
A new piece in
@PNASNews
I wrote in response to a recent study by
@liuchunlong113
which found widespread niche conservatism in invasive species
New paper! An epic project with a ton of undergrads (inc. 5 as coauthors!) Urban brown anoles in FL display and move around their environment less than those in natural forest. This flexibility in novel situations might explain their
#invasive
ability? 🦎
Anoles from left to right: Jamaican giant (Anolis garmani), Graham's/turquoise anole (A. grahami), striped footed anole (A. lineatopus; although who prefers Jamaican tiger anole?!), and the best for last, Jamaican twig anole (A. valencienni)
@wildlifejamaica
#scicomm
#jamaica
🦎
Absolutely thrilled with our copies of
@MVLizards
fabulous new book, "Dragon Lizards of Australia"! The most complete review to date of Australian agamids, including exceptionally detailed taxonomic, geographic and natural history information! And it's just beautiful! 🦎
#scicomm
Do extreme cold events cause mass mortality in lizards? Recent
@inaturalist
reports coming out of Texas certainly seem to suggest so...
🦎🦎🦎🥶
(thanks for sending this my way
@cjbthawley
!)
Blue lizards are such a curiosity, and other 'blue' traits appear to be distributed randomly across the lizard phylogeny: blue lateral spots, blue dewlap spots, blue eyes, entirely blue bodies like this spectacular lizard!
🦎🦎🦎
Very excited to learn that I have two papers in a recently published 'high-impact' list for the Journal of Heredity, the flagship journal of the
@theAGA_org
!
🧵 1/n
From adaptive radiation and genetic variation to the consequences of illegal hunting, this carefully curated collection highlights the best of the Journal of Heredity from
@theAGA_org
. Explore more for free:
Female brown anole N81 and I have been friends since Oct '15 when I first caught her as an adult (41mm svl). Still going strong in her 4th year, she has outlived everyone else in her cohort - blowing apart how long I thought anoles lived for in the wild!
#scicomm
#biology
🦎🦎🦎
I should have added this picture, as these are the main characters! Beautiful photography by
@JonJSuh
Clockwise from top left:
Cuban knight anole (Anolis equestris)
American green anole (A. carolinensis)
Cuban brown anole (A. sagrei)
Hispaniolan bark anole (A. distichus)
I love these - such a bizarre looking group of geckos! Similar blunt faces as fellow arid/desert specialists Phrynocephalus - I wonder if/how it's adaptive? 🦎
My fellow anole biologists will appreciate this...we just had reviews back from a brown anole (Anolis sagrei) Ms that said it was refreshing to see such a study done on a 'non-model organism' 😂🦎🦎🦎 - I am into anoles so deep that I forgot what the outside world looks like 🤣
The big freeze has hit Miami! When temperatures drop below a critical limit allowing lizards to function...sleeping lizards lose grip & drop out of trees. To an evolutionary biologist: natural selection in action?
Thanks for pic
@BrettinFlorida
!
#scicomm
#FloridaWinter
#Florida
Farewell carolinensis 👋 ...hang on, wait what now? Ok, farewell porcatus 👋 ...oh, no, not that either... 😂
Read all about rampant 'hybridization' of green anoles across South Florida - sure to spur exciting nomenclatural discussions
It was an honour to be involved in this paper led by
@ThSanger
-- and what about that for a cover image?!
🦎🦎🦎🥚🥚🥚
How are lizard embryos going to be affected by climate change?
#ClimateCrisis
#ClimateChange
And that's it for another Miami field season! Lizards were as great as always in
@FairchildGarden
- now a few days at home before heading to go see which lizards survived the summer in Jamaica 🇯🇲🦎🦎🦎
@BMcNoldy
This is such a crazy figure! Could you point me in the direction of where to get that historical hourly temp data? (if publicly available). Interested to see how much more Miami lizards are experiencing temps above their physiological tolerance limits each year...🦎Thank you!
'Predation of the Cuban Treefrog (Osteopilus sepentrionalis) and three nonnative lizard species by Eastern Screech-Owls (Megascops asio) in Manatee County, Florida, USA' by Steele & Enge (2023) has just been published in
#ReptilesandAmphibians
: