Author Archives: Rich Glor

About Rich Glor

Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester and longtime anole enthusiast.

Anole Annals Has a New Home!

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Rich Glor

It’s time to change you’re links everybody!  Anole Annals is officially abandoning the WordPress.com servers in favor of a host that will permit us more flexibility as we continue to expand and improve the blog.  Our new address is simply … Continue reading →

Posted in uncategorized | 3 Comments

The Kings of Greater Antillean Anole Taxonomy II: Thomas Barbour

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Rich Glor

I previously introduced my mission to recognize the five anole systematists responsible for describing the majority of the anole species found in the Greater Antilles.  The first king of Greater Antillean anole taxonomy was the prolific E. D. Cope.  Cope … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics from the Literature | 1 Comment

Evolution of a Lizard Room, Part VI: Generating Food In House

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Rich Glor

In a previous post on the evolution of the Glor Lab’s lizard room, Julienne discussed our general strategy for acquiring anole food.  As Julienne discussed, the crickets for our adult lizards are obtained primarily in the form of bi-weekly shipments … Continue reading →

Posted in Research Methods | Leave a comment

The Kings of Greater Antillean Anole Taxonomy I: E. D. Cope

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Rich Glor

Greater Antillean anoles would not be a model system for studies in ecology and evolutionary biology without the foundation provided by a century and a half of careful work by anole systematists.  Because their contributions often go unrecognized, I thought … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics from the Literature | 5 Comments

Staged Anole Fights on YouTube?

Posted on December 3, 2011 by Rich Glor

Fights among anoles are fairly common in nature, and we’ve had several previous posts documenting anole fights captured on film (1, 2, 3, 4).  A casual browsing of YouTube reveals many more anole fights, mostly between male Anolis carolinensis (1, 2, … Continue reading →

Posted in Natural History Observations, Notes from the Field | 4 Comments

Curly Tail Lizard Attempts to Consume Anole

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Rich Glor

Anole Annals has a long, gut-wrenching history of posting photographs of our favorite lizards being consumed (or at least partially consumed) by other organisms, including snakes (1, 2, 3), birds (1, 2, 3), other anoles (1, 2), a frog, a spider, … Continue reading →

Posted in Natural History Observations | 8 Comments

Evolution of a Lizard Room, Part V: The Shopvac

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Rich Glor

As we’ve discussed previously in our series on the evolution of a lizard room, some little tools and tricks can save you lots of time when maintaining a reasonably large lizard breeding facility.  One useful new tool that we added to … Continue reading →

Posted in Research Methods | 4 Comments

Get Your Own Copy of a Classic Anole Illustration

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Rich Glor

When its not trying to kill off distinguished herpetologists, the Center for North American Herpetology’s (CNAH‘s) mailing list is a great way to keep abreast of all kinds of herp related news.  Today, the CNAH’s list called attention to the … Continue reading →

Posted in uncategorized | 2 Comments

Amazing Research Opportunity for Young Anole Aficionados

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Rich Glor

Are you an undergraduate student with dreams of traveling to the Caribbean to study lizards?  If so, your dream could be realized through the NSF-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program organized by Bob Powell at Avila University.  Now in … Continue reading →

Posted in Anoles and Anolologists in the News, Education and Anoles | 1 Comment

Evolution of a Lizard Room, Part III: The Watering Wand

Posted on November 5, 2011 by Rich Glor

The thing about keeping captive anoles that most surprises the uninitiated is the fact that they don’t drink out of bowls.  Instead, anoles generally lap up water provided in the form of daily sprayings.  If you have a few anoles … Continue reading →

Posted in Research Methods, uncategorized | 1 Comment

Evolution of a Lizard Room Part II: Maintaining Humidity

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Rich Glor

As Julienne mentioned in the introductory post in our series on lab anole husbandry, we’ve been through a lot of trial and error over the past few years.  One fairly persistent issue has been maintaining our lizard rooms temperature and humidity. … Continue reading →

Posted in Research Methods | 3 Comments

Anoles Beaten at Their Own Game?

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Rich Glor

Even though anoles aren’t the only lizards to have evolved dewlaps, their spectacular diversity of dewlap shapes and sizes certainly makes them leaders in the global arms race for dewlap dominance.  Nevertheless, I recently came across some photos of the spectacularly … Continue reading →

Posted in Anole Annals Trivia, Natural History Observations | 6 Comments

Introduced Iguanas, Not Native Anoles, Dominate Dominican Gift Shop T-Shirts

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Rich Glor

We’ve previously discussed how difficult it is to find gifts featuring anoles (aside from some cafepress fare).  Even more depressing is the fact that introduced green iguanas (Iguana iguana) are regular features on gift shop fare in the Dominican Republic, … Continue reading →

Posted in Anoles in Commerce | 2 Comments

Amazing Anole Fight Caught on Film

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Rich Glor

Fights between male anoles in nature can get pretty serious.  A few dramatic anole fight videos have already been posted on-line, including some mentioned previously on anole annals ([1], [2]).  Recently, I posted photos from a fight we saw this … Continue reading →

Posted in Natural History Observations, Notes from the Field | 6 Comments

What Do You Get When You Combine Three Lizards and a Chicken?

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Rich Glor

New primers for sequencing nuclear loci from Anolis! Availability of genomic loci for sequencing has long been a major stumbling block to evolutionary inference in non-model taxa.  In anoles, for example, several decades of work relied almost exclusively on mitochondrial … Continue reading →

Posted in Anole Genome Research, New Research | 2 Comments

The ‘ii’s Have It: The Correct Scientific Name for Ricord’s Giant Anole

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Rich Glor

If I had a nickel for each time I’ve been asked whether the correct spelling of the scientific name for Ricord’s Giant Anole is Anolis ricordii with two ‘i’s or Anolis ricordi with one ‘i,’ I’d have at least 15 … Continue reading →

Posted in Ask the Experts | 3 Comments

Media Coverage of the Anole Genome Paper

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Rich Glor

We’ll try to keep this post updated with links to coverage of the anole genome paper (please use the comments to tell us about new articles as they appear!): Commentaries: Science 2.0, Why Evolution is True, Nature, National Geographic, Dust Tracks, myFDL (are you a … Continue reading →

Posted in Anole Genome Research | 2 Comments

Anole Genome Paper Published Today!

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Rich Glor

The anole genome paper is out in Nature today (although links on Nature’s own page only take you to a list of authors at the present time, I’m assuming this glitch will be fixed shortly).  Nature also published a brief … Continue reading →

Posted in Anole Genome Research, New Research | 2 Comments

The Origins of Anolis carolinensis

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Rich Glor

With all this discussion of the green anole’s genome, it seems like a good time to remind everyone of how Anolis carolinesis came to be the model organism that it is today.  The simple answer, of course, is that A. carolinensis is the only species … Continue reading →

Posted in Anole Genome Research | 3 Comments

Not Your Typical Genome: Homogeneous Anole Genome Lacks Isochores Common in Other Amniotes

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Rich Glor

Genomes are rarely homogeneous aggregations of Gs, As, Ts, and Cs.  Indeed, variation in  basepair frequency can have important implications for how genomes, and the organisms they generate, evolve.  Regions with relatively homogenous GC content that extend for more than … Continue reading →

Posted in Anole Genome Research, New Research | 3 Comments