Скачать или смотреть The Anomalies: The Dewlap

If you’ve lived in the Southeastern U.S., taken a Caribbean cruise, or stepped inside a middle school science classroom, you’ve probably seen an anole (pronounced uh-NOLE). Anoles are ubiquitous, tree-dwelling lizards of the New World tropics. Their small size, easy care, and interesting behaviors – the traits that make them ideal research subjects for students – have also led some of the world’s top biologists to study anoles. Over the last half-century, hundreds of scientists have published thousands of research studies on these unassuming lizards.

An anole’s most intriguing physical attribute is surely its dewlap, a colorful, extendable throat-flap. Among 400+ species of anoles in the Caribbean and Latin America, there are nearly as many dewlap colors. There’s a reason for this dazzling diversity: anoles seem to use dewlap colors to identify members of their own species, thereby avoiding wasted effort in courtship and territoriality. Dr. Manuel Leal, a biologist at the University of Missouri, was drawn to two Puerto Rican anole species that live side by side, yet – paradoxically – appear to share the same dewlap color. The closer he and his colleagues looked at these lizards, the more interesting they became. Through Leal’s work, what began as a curious natural history observation grew into a striking example of natural selection’s role in the evolution of animal signals.