Tiny lizards found in Madagascar

By Ella Davies

Reporter, BBC Nature

One of the world's tiniest lizards has been discovered by keen-eyed researchers in Madagascar.

The miniature chameleon, Brookesia micra, reaches a maximum length of just 29mm.

German scientists also found a further three new species in the north of the island.

The lizards were limited to very small ranges and scientists are concerned they could be at risk from habitat disturbance.

The discovery is reported in the journal PLoS ONE.

The research team, led by Dr Frank Glaw from the Zoologische Staatssammlung in Munich, have a specialist knowledge of Madagascar's dwarf chameleons having described other species in the past.

They conducted fieldwork at night during the wet season in order to find the easily overlooked animals.

"They mostly live in the leaf litter in the day... But at night they climb up and then you can spot them," said Dr Glaw, explaining that the animals moved up into branches to sleep.

The scientists carefully scanned the most likely habitats with torches and headlamps to find roosting sites.

They found the smallest species on a remote limestone islet and believe it may represent an extreme case of island dwarfism.

This phenomenon occurs when a species becomes smaller over evolutionary time in order to adapt to a restricted habitat such as an island.

According to Dr Glaw there could have been a "two-island effect" in the case of B. micra.

"It is possible that the big island of Madagascar has produced the general group of dwarf chameleons and the very small island has produced the tiny species," he told BBC Nature.

Read on:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17028940

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/58514000/jpg/_58514405_tiny_chameleons_photo1_brookesia_micra_juvenile_on_match_joern_koehler.jpg

Castaway Lizards Provide Insight Into Elusive Evolutionary Process, Founder Effects (via Herp Digest)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2012) 

A University of Rhode Island biologist who released lizards on tiny uninhabited islands in the Bahamas has shed light on the interaction between evolutionary 

Jason Kolbe, a URI assistant professor of biological sciences, and colleagues from Duke University, Harvard University and the University of California at Davis, found that the lizards' genetic and morphological traits were determined by both natural selection and a phenomenon called founder effects, which occur when species colonize new territory.

Their research was published recently in the journal Science.

"We rarely observe founder effects as they happen in nature, but we know that it happens because islands are colonized by new species over time," said Kolbe. "What we didn't know was how these evolutionary mechanisms interact with each other. What we learned is that the differences caused by the founder effects persist even as populations adapt to their new environments."

The founder effect is the loss of genetic variation that occurs when a new population is established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population. It often results in the new population becoming genetically or morphologically different from the original population.

The scientists randomly collected brown anole lizards from a large island near Great Abaco and released one pair on each of seven nearby islands whose lizard populations had been cleared by a recent hurricane. The source island is forested while the other islands have short, scrub vegetation. 

Previous research found that anoles living in forests had longer hind limbs than those found in scrub habitat. Lizards with longer limbs can run faster on the broad perches available in forests, while short-limbed lizards are more adept at moving on the narrower perches found in lower vegetation.
The scientists revisited each of the islands over the next four years to measure the lizards' limb length and collect tissue samples for genetic analysis. All of the new populations survived and increased an average of 13-fold in the first two years before leveling off.

"We noticed a founder effect one year after starting the experiment, which resulted in differences among the lizards on the seven islands," Kolbe said. "Some of the islands had lizards with longer limbs and some had lizards with shorter limbs, but that was random with respect to the vegetation on the new islands."

Because the structure of the vegetation on the islands differed from that of the source island, the scientists predicted that natural selection would lead the lizards to develop shorter limbs.
"Over the next four years, the lizards on all the islands experienced a decrease in leg length that is attributable to natural selection," Kolbe explained. "But those that started out with the longest hind limbs still had the longest hind limbs. The fact that the populations maintained their order from longest to shortest limbs throughout the experiment means that both founder effects and natural selection contributed to their current differences."

According to Kolbe, founding effects are rarely observed in nature, with most previous studies being conducted in the laboratory. "Ours is the first to study this process experimentally in a natural setting, and we were able to account for multiple evolutionary mechanisms through time," he said. "We manipulated the founding of these islands, but everything else about it was natural."
The next step in the research will be to determine how long the founder effects persist before other factors erase its signature.

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society.

Leaping lizards and dinosaurs inspire robot design

University of California, Berkeley, biologists and engineers ‑ including undergraduate and graduate students ‑ studied how lizards manage to leap successfully even when they slip and stumble. They found that lizards swing their tails upward to prevent them from pitching head-over-heels into a rock.

But after the team added a tail to a robotic car named Tailbot, they discovered that counteracting the effect of a slip is not as simple as throwing your tail in the air. Instead, robots and lizards must actively adjust the angle of their tails just right to remain upright.

“We showed for the first time that lizards swing their tail up or down to counteract the rotation of their body, keeping them stable,” said team leader Robert J. Full, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology. “Inspiration from lizard tails will likely lead to far more agile search-and-rescue robots, as well as ones having greater capability to more rapidly detect chemical, biological or nuclear hazards.”

Agile therapod dinosaurs like the velociraptor depicted in the movie Jurassic Park may also have used their tails as stabilizers to prevent forward pitch, Full said. Their tail movement is illustrated in a prescient chase sequence from the 1993 movie in which the animated animal leaps from a balcony onto a T. rex skeleton.

“Muscles willing, the dinosaur could be even more effective with a swing of its tail in controlling body attitude than the lizards,” Full said.

Continued: http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/01/04/leaping-lizards-show-robots-the-value-of-a-tail/

NZ Lizards face grim fate if not helped (Via Herp Digest)

Lizards face grim fate if not helped, New Zeland's Commonn, McCanns skink,common gecko and the green or jeweled gecko.
by Tracy Miles 12/1/11,Timaru Herald, New Zealand

Attempts are being made to save South Canterbury's remaining lizard populations but fears are that loss of habitat will increase in coming years.

Piles of stones that have lain in South Canterbury paddocks, sometimes cleared from land by farmers more than a century ago, have become home to the common skink.
However, the Rangitata South Irrigation Project is expected to see changes to farming in the area, including moves to dairy farming.

The stone rows, described by Timaru teacher and lizard researcher Hermann Frank as "unique habitats" could well become a thing of the past, as fencelines are removed to allow for large irrigators.
The irrigation project is aimed at providing more reliable irrigation and will service 16,000 hectares of farmland between the Rangitata and Orari rivers, from Arundel to the coast.

The water is expected to be available in 2013.

In South Canterbury excluding the Mackenzie, the once widespread so-called common skink is now isolated to farmland, such as in the stone rows or piles, to gardens and along some beaches.

Mr Frank instigated the first systematic survey of lizards in South Canterbury, excluding the Mackenzie, in 2008, working for a year to identify where the district's lizards are.

He found four species, with what was the common skink being made up of two distinct species, the common (breeding in the stone piles) and the McCanns skink; and two species of gecko, the common gecko and the "very, very rare" green or jewelled gecko.

In a joint project between the Timaru District Council, Forest & Bird and Mr Frank, a disused TDC roading shingle quarry near the Orari Bridge by Geraldine is being prepared as a potential new lizard habitat for endangered colonies.

Mr Frank has also been working to establish connections with farmers to help avert the destruction of the district's common skink population.

He said he needs farmers to let him know well in advance if stones had to be removed so the skinks could be caught and relocated.

He said despite his efforts, stone piles had gone without him being alerted, or he learned about it "right at the time".

There were ways of catching the skinks but it took about two months, and could not be done during winter when they were inactive.

Older people had memories of lizards, from when they were more common, and from trips to the Mackenzie country, but for younger generations many had not seen a lizard and that could explain a lack of awareness, indifference, or them being made low priority.

Mr Frank said a management plan was being created for the quarry which would be made ready with dryland plants such as tussock, coprosma and matagouri, and by creating hiding places for the lizards. However, it was not intended to relocate them there except as an emergency measure.

If we don't try to preserve the remaining lizard populations of New Zealand, "most certainly we will lose them forever," said Timaru lizard researcher Hermann Frank.

The green jewelled gecko, which lives in native vegetation rather than on the ground, is a threatened species and has been targeted by wildlife smugglers.

In South Canterbury this gecko is very rare, Mr Frank said.

"There are virtually only three populations in South Canterbury," making their situation precarious.
It would take a 10-year period of study to get a clearer idea what their numbers are doing, said Mr Frank, who now spends most of his lizard study time hunting for jewelled geckos at weekends, observing the three known populations and hoping to find more.

He cannot reveal where the jewelled lizard populations are locally because of the trade in endangered species.

However, he said after development, pests are the second-biggest threat and appropriate ways of pest control were still being explored.

Weeds were also a threat, with broom and gorse encroaching on native bush being sprayed by farmers, killing the native bush as well.

"The main thing for all the lizards is to protect the habitat so there is no destruction or development."
For New Zealand's lizards as a whole, some species now only survive on predator-free islands and wildlife reserves.

New Zealand's lizard populations were unusual in that there were so many species, 90, for the country's small size - about half skink and half gecko.

Also, New Zealand lizards (all but one species) were the only ones to give birth to live babies, rather than laying eggs, the usual reptilian means of reproduction.
Geckos usually only have twins, once a year.

What exact local numbers of the four South Canterbury lizard species are is unknown.

Mr Frank's study identified that the local common gecko - in this area it is a distinct species of common gecko called the Southern Alps gecko - was mainly now in limestone areas in the South Canterbury hinterland whereas it was likely they used to be further down on the plains also.

Being nocturnal creatures, they were more difficult to spot and he had been unable to find out if geckos were cohabitating with skinks in stone rows on farmland.

At the time of Mr Frank's 2008 lizard study, which excluded the Mackenzie, it was not known what species he would find in South Canterbury.

The study identified four species, the common skink, the McCann's skink, the common gecko and the jewelled gecko.

His study had to work around the habits of the lizards, with skinks coming out to sun only in certain conditions.

Being cold blooded they used the sun to warm up, but would seek shelter from too hot conditions, leaving to hunt for insects among the stones. Where native shrubs are available, they will also eat autumn berries.

With conditions for sunning right, it was still possible to see quite a number, he said.

The McCann's skink was only found in one limestone area, quite separate from the other lizard species, and on two local beaches.

Although not widespread in this area, it was more common in the Mackenzie, he said.

"To have these remnant populations is quite important from a conservation aspect.

"If we can keep these habitats at least to a certain degree intact, so they can continue to live there, that's an important aspect of what we're trying to achieve."

Fossil 'is first pregnant lizard' (via Dawn Holloway_

A 120-million-year-old fossil is the oldest pregnant lizard ever discovered, according to scientists.


The fossil, found in China, is a very complete 30cm (12in) lizard with more than a dozen embryos in its body.

The lizard was just days from giving birth when it died and was buried

Researchers from University College London, who studied the fossil, say it was just days from giving birth when it died and was buried during the Cretaceous period.

The team reports the findings in the journal Naturwissenschaften.

The fossil is especially interesting to scientists because it is a reptile that produced live young rather than laying eggs.

The heads of at least 15 lizard embryos are visible inside the body of the fossil

Only 20% of living lizards and snakes produce live young, and this shows it is an ancient, if unusual, trait.

"I didn't think much of the fossil when I first saw it," said Prof Susan Evans, joint lead author of the paper, from University College London.

But when her colleague, Yuan Wang, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, examined the fossil he spotted the tiny remains of at least 15 almost fully developed embryos inside it.

"Sure enough, when I examined it under the microscope, I could see all these little babies," Prof Evans recalled.

The fossil is so well preserved that the minuscule teeth of the developing young are visible on very close inspection.

"This specimen is the oldest pregnant lizard we have seen," said Prof Evans.

"It implies physiological adaptations, like adequate blood supply to the embryos and very thin shells - or no shells at all - to allow oxygen supply, evolved very early on."

Up until now the fossil records only contained examples of marine lizards giving birth to live young.

Scientists thought that, in extinct reptiles, live birth was restricted to aquatic species, such as marine ichthyosaurs. These creatures would have been able to move through water with relative ease, even when heavily pregnant.

Prof Evans said: "We do know that this lizard lived near to water and we think it likely that they could swim even though they primarily lived on land.

"This would make sense as a pregnant lizard would be less constrained by carrying offspring - she'd be able to escape into water if a hungry dinosaur came along."

The fossil comes from world famous rocks of the Jehol Group in north-eastern China, where the fine limestone there has been worn away to gradually reveal hundreds of exquisite specimens of dinosaurs, but also fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, plants and invertebrates.

The mother lizard has been identified as a specimen of Yabeinosaurus, a large, slow-growing and relatively primitive lizard.

Most lizard species, such as iguanas, lay eggs

By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC Nature
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/14200255



Adders, toads and lizards are disappearing from UK

Wednesday, 9 March 2011
By Emma Brennand
Earth News reporter

The native adder is effectively disappearing from our landscape, a study has revealed.

The first nationwide survey of UK amphibian and reptiles has found that Britain's most widespread snake, the adder, is in decline.

Slow worms, common lizards and grass snakes are also becoming less widespread, as are the common toad, common frog and the great crested newt.

The only species found to be increasing its range is the palmate newt.

These startling trends come from a report produced by the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC) Trust, which has been gathering data on 12 species since 2007.

The trust's National Amphibian and Reptile Recording Scheme (NARRS) has presented its interim findings, which cover the first half of the six-year survey period from 2007 to 2012.

The full survey aims to establish baselines for widespread species - figures against which future status changes can be assessed.

The survey focuses on widespread amphibian and reptile population. These include the great crested, smooth and palmate newts, common toad and frog, common lizard, slow-worm, grass snake and adder, as well as the wall and green lizards and agile frog in Jersey.

The rarest species, such as the great crested newt, already have high levels of protection, but it is strongly suspected that some formerly common species now in decline.

For this reason, the UK government passed legislation in 2007 prioritising the protection of common toads and all UK reptiles.

But this survey suggests that their numbers continue to fall.

Out of approximately 250 square kilometres surveyed, adders were found in about 20.

"Though we suspected that adders were getting much less common, it is very alarming that they turn up in only 7% of reptile surveys nationally," Dr John Wilkinson, Research and Monitoring Officer for the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust, told BBC News.

"Adder occupancy is poor everywhere, making them our rarest widespread reptile by far and in need of serious conservation attention."

Historically, it was believed that adders were most at risk from persecution - people killing the snakes because they are venomous. But the ARC Trust say that their decline may also be caused by development and disturbance.

Under threat

Other widespread amphibians and reptiles also appear to be in trouble.

"There is no single trend as different species are sensitive to different issues," explained Dr Wilkinson.

"Broadly, though, our reptiles and amphibians are doing poorly and adders in particular."

Common frogs are becoming less common in the south of England, particularly in areas which have experienced the most development in recent decades.

And, in the same area of England, the common toad is only half as widespread as the common frog.

"Great crested newts may be much rarer in Scotland than we thought - they haven't turned up in any of our NARRS surveys [there]," said Dr Wilkinson.

Common lizards, thought to occur throughout the UK, were seen rarely in the north and central regions, including Wales. Slow-worms were also found to be scarce in these areas.

Dr Wilkinson believes that this may be because these leg-less lizards are more difficult to find, as they burrow in undergrowth. So a reduced number of sightings may not necessarily reflect a decrease in their population.

Acid-lover

Surprisingly, palmate newt numbers are higher than expected, which might indicate changes in the quality of Britain's ponds.

Unlike many other amphibian species, these small newts thrive in acidic pools that are formed through acid rain fall or agricultural run-off.

The main drive of amphibian and reptile decline is thought to be habitat fragmentation and development.

Conservationists say this is a particular problem for toads, which are more sensitive than frogs to changes in habitat.

The final NARRS report is due to be published in Spring 2014.

See video at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9405000/9405801.stm
(Submitted by Liz R.)

Physics of Burrowing Sandfish Revealed (via Herp Digest)

Physics of Burrowing Sandfish Revealed
Simulations show how lizard wriggles a fine line to maximize thrust, extension
By Daniel Strain, 2/22/11

The sandfish lizard wriggles through desert sands like a sci-fi monster. Now, using computer simulations and bendy robots, researchers at Georgia Tech in Atlanta have taken the most complete look yet at the everyday physics of burrowing animals.

And, boy, does this reptile wriggle, the team reports online February 23 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. "This particular behavior is built for speed," says physicist Daniel Goldman, one of the study coauthors.



Like the deadly sandworms in the Dune science fiction series, a host of animals from scorpions to snakes haunt subterranean deserts across the planet. It's not easy to study how these creatures careen through their environments, Goldman says. Scientists have a good idea how water behaves in the wake of an undulating eel or how air flows over a bird wing. But shuffling sand grains ping off each other like a wickedly complicated game of pool.



X-ray studies have shown that sandfish lizards (Scincus scincus) navigate such chaos with an earthwormlike wriggle, Goldman says, tucking in their legs and curling from side to side in S-shaped waves. A fast sandfish lizard dive covers two body lengths per second - and the creatures can grow to 4 inches long, he adds. But just how the lizards achieve such speed in a complex sandy environment wasn't clear. For that, Goldman's team turned to a new set of tools. 

First, researchers simulated sandfish lizards swimming through a field of 3-millimeter-wide glass beads on a computer. The program - which ate up 20 to 30 desktop PCs and still took days to run - illustrated how every bead bumped and thudded as the virtual lizard passed by. The real fun came next. The team built a spandex-covered robo-reptile that could wriggle much like the real thing. "The beauty of robotics compared to the simulation and theory: It's all in the real world," Goldman says. I!
f the team wanted the robot to bend more or less, the researchers just asked it to bend more or less.



On-screen or clad in spandex, the tests agreed. If virtual lizards curl too much, they don't move far enough forward with each wriggle. If they bend too little, the lizards can't give enough push. Real-life sandfish lizards walk, or wriggle, this fine line nearly perfectly. "They dive into the sand as fast as they can," Goldman says.

Such finely tuned diving isn't useful just for lizards, says Robin Murphy, director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue at Texas A&M University in College Station. She designs robots to help in the aftermath of disasters like earthquakes or mudslides. But when it comes to machines that can dig like earthworms and slip through rubble, nothing like that exists, she says.

"There's a lack of any technology short of a shovel." Burrowing animals could inspire new machines, but so far, few studies have been able to capture the constraints robots would face in dirt-filled or muddy environments. "This is the first I've seen that I said, 'Okay, we've got it,'" she says. 

Robots inspired by animals are neat, admits Eric Tytell, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who studies how fish swim in water.

But the Georgia team flipped that inspiration around, too. Goldman and his colleagues used robots to get a better grasp of biology. And that's really clever, Tytell says. 

Goldman says his studies have convinced him that sandfish lizards dive for one reason - to escape. In the desert, there's nowhere else to hide. "You just want to get the hell out of there as fast as you can," he says.

Tick Population Plummets in Absence of Lizard Hosts (Via Herp Digest)

Tick Population Plummets in Absence of Lizard Hosts

By: Sarah Yang, UC Berkeley Media Relations, 2/22/11


A Western fence lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis) can often be found with dozens of ticks attached to it. However, they have a unique influence on the ecology of Lyme disease. The lizard's immune system clears the Lyme disease bacteria from ticks after the ticks feed on the lizard.

The Western fence lizard's reputation for helping to reduce the threat of Lyme disease is in jeopardy. A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that areas where the lizard had been removed saw a subsequent drop in the population of the ticks that transmit Lyme disease.
"Our expectation going into this study was that removing the lizards would increase the risk of Lyme disease, so we were surprised by these findings," said study lead author Andrea Swei, who conducted the study while she was a Ph.D. student in integrative biology at UC Berkeley. "Our experiment found that the net result of lizard removal was a decrease in the density of infected ticks, and therefore decreased Lyme disease risk to humans."

The study, to be published online Tuesday, Feb. 15, in the journal Proceedings of The Royal Society B, illustrates the complex role the Western fence lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis) plays in the abundance of disease-spreading ticks.

Lyme disease - characterized by fever, headache, fatigue and a bullseye rash - is spread through the bite of ticks infected with spirochete bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi. In the Western region of the United States, the Western black legged tick (Ixodes pacificus) is the primary vector for Lyme disease bacteria.

In 1998, a pioneering study led by UC Berkeley entomologist Robert Lane found that a protein in the Western fence lizard's blood killed Borrelia bacteria, and as a result, Lyme-infected ticks that feed on the lizard's blood are cleansed of the disease-causing pathogen. Moreover, research has found that up to 90 percent of the juvenile ticks in this species feed on the Western fence lizard, which is prevalent throughout California and neighboring states.

The lizard is thus often credited for the relatively low incidence of Lyme disease in the Western United States. The new UC Berkeley-led study put that assumption to the test experimentally.

"When you have an animal like the Western fence lizard that supports such a huge population of ticks, you can't assume that all those juvenile ticks will go to another host if the lizard population drops," said Lane, UC Berkeley Professor of the Graduate School and co-author of this study.

For their field test, the researchers selected 14 plots, each measuring 10,000 square meters and spread out over two sites in Marin County, Calif. Half the plots were located at China Camp State Park, and the other half were at the Marin Municipal Water District Sky Oaks headquarters. The researchers had already been extensively surveying tick density in those plots over the course of two years, so they had detailed data on tick and vertebrate populations before this experimental field trial.

From March to April 2008, before tick season went into full swing, the researchers captured and removed 447 lizards from six plots - three at each site - and left the remaining plots unaltered as controls. The lizards that had been captured were marked before being relocated so the researchers could determine whether any wandered back into their old haunts.

After the lizards were removed, the researchers spent the following month trapping other mammals known to harbor ticks - particularly woodrats (Neotoma fuscipes) and deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) - to determine whether they bore an uptick in ticks as a result of the lizards' absence. The researchers also checked for differences between control and experimental plots in the abundance of host-seeking ticks by systematically dragging a large white flannel cloth over the ground.

The researchers found that in plots where the lizards had been removed, ticks turned to the female woodrat as their next favorite host. On average, each female woodrat got an extra five ticks for company when the lizards disappeared.

However, the researchers found that 95 percent of the ticks that no longer had lizard blood to feast on failed to latch on to another host.

"One of the goals of our study is to tease apart the role these lizards play in Lyme disease ecology," said Swei, who is now a post-doctoral associate at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York. "It was assumed that these lizards played an important role in reducing Lyme disease risk. Our study shows that it's more complicated than that."

Notwithstanding the results in this new study, Lane pointed out that the Western fence lizard are key to keeping infection rates down among adult ticks. "This study focused only on the risk from juvenile ticks, specifically those in the nymphal stage," he said. "The earlier finding that adult ticks have lower infection rates because they feed predominantly on the Western fence lizard at the nymphal stage still holds."

"In attempting to decrease infectious disease risk, we need to remember the law of unexpected consequences," said Sam Scheiner, program director in the National Science Foundation Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research through the joint NSF-NIH (National Institutes of Health) Ecology of Infectious Diseases Program. "This study demonstrates the complexity of infectious diseases."

Other authors on this study are Cheryl Briggs, a professor at UC Santa Barbara's Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology; and Richard Ostfeld, a senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies.

'Godzilla-like creature' nabbed in Calif. town

Owner reunited with 5-foot-long lizard that wandered free for a couple days

msnbc.com staff and news service reports
updated 1/26/2011 9:41:39 PM ET

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Animal services officers often get calls reporting "huge," monstrous reptiles, only to arrive and find an itty-bitty garden snake.

But people strolling along Grambling Way, near Massachusetts Avenue, in Riverside Tuesday got a shock when they found they were sharing the sidewalk with a five-foot-long monitor lizard.

"It was just walking along," said John Welsh, spokesman for Riverside County Department of Animal Services. "People were stunned by the size of this thing. It looks like the size of a small alligator."

Animal control officer Jenny Selter was dispatched to the scene. "She said she saw it and almost jumped back in her truck," Walsh said. "The residents were freaking out because here's the Godzilla-like creature walking down the sidewalk."

Selter managed to get a catch pole — a long pole with a loop at the end that's used to handle vicious dogs — around the animal's neck, Welsh said. It was docile at first, but then it started hissing.

A police officer grabbed the lizard's body while Selter held onto its sharp, lashing tail, and together they put it in a compartment of her truck that's usually used for large dogs.

Black-throated monitor lizards are carnivorous, legal to own in California and native to the African grasslands and parts of Asia. Juveniles go for about $100 in pet stores, but they grow.

Back at the shelter, staff found the reptile was well-behaved for a monitor lizard.

"The last one we had was nasty. But this one doesn't hiss and we were able to walk it around. It was investigating and didn't snap at anyone," Welsh said. "We suspect that it's been someone's pet for a long time, because it's so big. I think they might let it wander around the house. Maybe it sleeps on a bean bag?"

Later Wednesday, owner Tom Casarez Jr. of Riverside was reunited with the lizard, named Elmer, Welsh said on the Animal Services website.

Casarez told officers that Elmer had been missing since Sunday. Elmer's tank was being cleaned, and a door in the residence was left open, allowing the lizard to slip out unnoticed.

Welsh said Animal Services officers visited Casarez's home and determined Elmer was being properly cared for.

Noting that Elmer is a carnivore, Welsh said there hadn't been any reports of missing pets in the neighborhood.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41267913/ns/us_news-weird_news/

'Godzilla-like creature' nabbed in Calif. town

Owner reunited with 5-foot-long lizard that wandered free for a couple days

msnbc.com staff and news service reports
updated 1/26/2011 9:41:39 PM ET

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Animal services officers often get calls reporting "huge," monstrous reptiles, only to arrive and find an itty-bitty garden snake.

But people strolling along Grambling Way, near Massachusetts Avenue, in Riverside Tuesday got a shock when they found they were sharing the sidewalk with a five-foot-long monitor lizard.

"It was just walking along," said John Welsh, spokesman for Riverside County Department of Animal Services. "People were stunned by the size of this thing. It looks like the size of a small alligator."

Animal control officer Jenny Selter was dispatched to the scene. "She said she saw it and almost jumped back in her truck," Walsh said. "The residents were freaking out because here's the Godzilla-like creature walking down the sidewalk."

Selter managed to get a catch pole — a long pole with a loop at the end that's used to handle vicious dogs — around the animal's neck, Welsh said. It was docile at first, but then it started hissing.

A police officer grabbed the lizard's body while Selter held onto its sharp, lashing tail, and together they put it in a compartment of her truck that's usually used for large dogs.

Black-throated monitor lizards are carnivorous, legal to own in California and native to the African grasslands and parts of Asia. Juveniles go for about $100 in pet stores, but they grow.

Back at the shelter, staff found the reptile was well-behaved for a monitor lizard.

"The last one we had was nasty. But this one doesn't hiss and we were able to walk it around. It was investigating and didn't snap at anyone," Welsh said. "We suspect that it's been someone's pet for a long time, because it's so big. I think they might let it wander around the house. Maybe it sleeps on a bean bag?"

Later Wednesday, owner Tom Casarez Jr. of Riverside was reunited with the lizard, named Elmer, Welsh said on the Animal Services website.

Casarez told officers that Elmer had been missing since Sunday. Elmer's tank was being cleaned, and a door in the residence was left open, allowing the lizard to slip out unnoticed.

Welsh said Animal Services officers visited Casarez's home and determined Elmer was being properly cared for.

Noting that Elmer is a carnivore, Welsh said there hadn't been any reports of missing pets in the neighborhood.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41267913/ns/us_news-weird_news/

5-foot Monitor Lizard, 'Godzilla-Like Creature,' Freaks Out Residents In California Neighborhood

01/25/11 10:37 PM

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Animal services officers often get calls reporting "huge," monstrous reptiles, only to arrive and find an itty-bitty garden snake.

The 5-foot Monitor lizard wandering around a condo complex in the city of Riverside was way bigger than animal control officer Jenny Selter could have imagined.

"She said she saw it and almost jumped back in her truck," said John Welsh, spokesman for Riverside County Animal Services. "The residents were freaking out because here's the Godzilla-like creature walking down the sidewalk."

Selter managed to get a catch pole – a long pole with a loop at the end that's used to handle vicious dogs – around the animal's neck, Welsh said. It was docile at first, but then it started hissing.

A police officer grabbed the lizard's body while Selter held onto its sharp, lashing tail, and together they put it in a compartment of her truck that's usually used for large dogs.

Black-throated Monitor lizards are carnivorous, legal to own in California and native to the African grasslands and parts of Asia. Juveniles go for about $100 in pet stores, but they grow.

Back at the shelter, staff found the reptile was well-behaved for a Monitor lizard.

"The last one we had was nasty. But this one doesn't hiss and we were able to walk it around. It was investigating and didn't snap at anyone," Welsh said. "We suspect that it's been someone's pet for a long time, because it's so big. I think they might let it wander around the house. Maybe it sleeps on a bean bag?"

Welsh thinks the scaly pet might have escaped its cage or gotten loose while its owner was away, and he hoped its owner comes to claim it soon.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/26/5foot-monitor-lizard-godz_n_814145.html

5-foot Monitor Lizard, 'Godzilla-Like Creature,' Freaks Out Residents In California Neighborhood

01/25/11 10:37 PM

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Animal services officers often get calls reporting "huge," monstrous reptiles, only to arrive and find an itty-bitty garden snake.

The 5-foot Monitor lizard wandering around a condo complex in the city of Riverside was way bigger than animal control officer Jenny Selter could have imagined.

"She said she saw it and almost jumped back in her truck," said John Welsh, spokesman for Riverside County Animal Services. "The residents were freaking out because here's the Godzilla-like creature walking down the sidewalk."

Selter managed to get a catch pole – a long pole with a loop at the end that's used to handle vicious dogs – around the animal's neck, Welsh said. It was docile at first, but then it started hissing.

A police officer grabbed the lizard's body while Selter held onto its sharp, lashing tail, and together they put it in a compartment of her truck that's usually used for large dogs.

Black-throated Monitor lizards are carnivorous, legal to own in California and native to the African grasslands and parts of Asia. Juveniles go for about $100 in pet stores, but they grow.

Back at the shelter, staff found the reptile was well-behaved for a Monitor lizard.

"The last one we had was nasty. But this one doesn't hiss and we were able to walk it around. It was investigating and didn't snap at anyone," Welsh said. "We suspect that it's been someone's pet for a long time, because it's so big. I think they might let it wander around the house. Maybe it sleeps on a bean bag?"

Welsh thinks the scaly pet might have escaped its cage or gotten loose while its owner was away, and he hoped its owner comes to claim it soon.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/26/5foot-monitor-lizard-godz_n_814145.html

Environmental Factors Limit Species Diversity, Lizard Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Dec. 29, 2010) — New research on lizards in the Caribbean demonstrates that species diversification is limited by the environment. The finding supports and extends the MacArthur-Wilson theory of island biogeography.


It's long been accepted by biologists that environmental factors cause the diversity -- or number -- of species to increase before eventually leveling off. Some recent work, however, has suggested that species diversity continues instead of entering into a state of equilibrium. But new research on lizards in the Caribbean not only supports the original theory that finite space, limited food supplies, and competition for resources all work together to achieve equilibrium; it builds on the theory by extending it over a much longer timespan.


The research was done by Daniel Rabosky of the University of California, Berkeley and Richard Glor of the University of Rochester who studied patterns of species accumulation of lizards over millions of years on the four Caribbean islands of Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Cuba. Their paper is being published December 21 in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Glor and Rabosky focused on species diversity -- the number of distinct species of lizards -- not the number of individual lizards.

"Geographic size correlates to diversity," said Glor. "In general, the larger the area, the greater the number of species that can be supported. For example, there are 60 species of Anolis lizards on Cuba, but far fewer species on the much smaller islands of Jamaica and Puerto Rico." There are only 6 species on Jamaica and 10 on Puerto Rico.

Ecologists Robert MacArthur of Princeton University and E.O. Wilson of Harvard University established the theory of island biogeography in the 1960s to explain the diversity and richness of species in restricted habitats, as well as the limits on the growth in number of species. Glor said the MacArthur-Wilson theory was developed for ecological time-scales, which encompass thousands of years, while his work with Rabosky extends the concepts over a million years. "MacArthur and Wilson recognized the macroevolutionary implications of their work," explained Glor, "but focused on ecological time-scales for simplicity."

Historically, biologists needed fossil records to study patterns of species diversification of lizards on the Caribbean islands. But advances in molecular methodology allowed Glor and Rabosky to use DNA sequences to reconstruct evolutionary trees that show the relationships between species.

The two scientists found that species diversification of lizards on the four islands reached a plateau millions of years ago and has essentially come to an end.

Glor said the extent and quality of the data used in the research allowed him and Rabosky to show that species diversification of lizards on the islands was not continuing and had indeed entered a state of equilibrium.

"When we look at other islands and continents that vary in species richness," said Glor, "we can't just consider rates of accumulation; we need to look at the plateau points."

Glor emphasizes that a state of equilibrium does not mean that the evolution of a species comes to an end. Lizards will continue to adapt to changes in their environment, but they are not expected to develop in a way that increases the number of species within a habitat.

Glor believes his work with Rabosky represents the "final word" on the importance of limits on species diversity over the rate of speciation when explaining the species-area relationship in anole lizards.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101220163248.htm

Environmental Factors Limit Species Diversity, Lizard Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Dec. 29, 2010) — New research on lizards in the Caribbean demonstrates that species diversification is limited by the environment. The finding supports and extends the MacArthur-Wilson theory of island biogeography.


It's long been accepted by biologists that environmental factors cause the diversity -- or number -- of species to increase before eventually leveling off. Some recent work, however, has suggested that species diversity continues instead of entering into a state of equilibrium. But new research on lizards in the Caribbean not only supports the original theory that finite space, limited food supplies, and competition for resources all work together to achieve equilibrium; it builds on the theory by extending it over a much longer timespan.


The research was done by Daniel Rabosky of the University of California, Berkeley and Richard Glor of the University of Rochester who studied patterns of species accumulation of lizards over millions of years on the four Caribbean islands of Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Cuba. Their paper is being published December 21 in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Glor and Rabosky focused on species diversity -- the number of distinct species of lizards -- not the number of individual lizards.

"Geographic size correlates to diversity," said Glor. "In general, the larger the area, the greater the number of species that can be supported. For example, there are 60 species of Anolis lizards on Cuba, but far fewer species on the much smaller islands of Jamaica and Puerto Rico." There are only 6 species on Jamaica and 10 on Puerto Rico.

Ecologists Robert MacArthur of Princeton University and E.O. Wilson of Harvard University established the theory of island biogeography in the 1960s to explain the diversity and richness of species in restricted habitats, as well as the limits on the growth in number of species. Glor said the MacArthur-Wilson theory was developed for ecological time-scales, which encompass thousands of years, while his work with Rabosky extends the concepts over a million years. "MacArthur and Wilson recognized the macroevolutionary implications of their work," explained Glor, "but focused on ecological time-scales for simplicity."

Historically, biologists needed fossil records to study patterns of species diversification of lizards on the Caribbean islands. But advances in molecular methodology allowed Glor and Rabosky to use DNA sequences to reconstruct evolutionary trees that show the relationships between species.

The two scientists found that species diversification of lizards on the four islands reached a plateau millions of years ago and has essentially come to an end.

Glor said the extent and quality of the data used in the research allowed him and Rabosky to show that species diversification of lizards on the islands was not continuing and had indeed entered a state of equilibrium.

"When we look at other islands and continents that vary in species richness," said Glor, "we can't just consider rates of accumulation; we need to look at the plateau points."

Glor emphasizes that a state of equilibrium does not mean that the evolution of a species comes to an end. Lizards will continue to adapt to changes in their environment, but they are not expected to develop in a way that increases the number of species within a habitat.

Glor believes his work with Rabosky represents the "final word" on the importance of limits on species diversity over the rate of speciation when explaining the species-area relationship in anole lizards.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101220163248.htm

Leapin’ lizards! KU graduate student discovers a new species

The Associated Press

A University of Kansas graduate student was on the hunt for a new lizard species and found it in Vietnam — on a restaurant menu.

A colleague in Vietnam told Jesse Grismer last year about the possibility of a new species in Vietnam and sent him photos and tissue samples. Grismer tested the samples for mitochondrial DNA and realized they were probably dealing with something new.

Grismer went to Vietnam in search of the lizard with his father, Lee Grismer, a biology professor at La Sierra University in Riverside, Calif. They headed to a restaurant in the Ca Mau region on Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, where they had heard the lizard was on the menu.

The restaurant was all out of the lizard meat, but Grismer said he did eventually taste the new species of lizard, which they named after the scientist and family friend in Vietnam, Ngo Van Tri, who told them about it. It’s called Leilolepis ngovantrii.

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/12/26/2543671/leapin-lizards-a-new-species.html

Leapin’ lizards! KU graduate student discovers a new species

The Associated Press

A University of Kansas graduate student was on the hunt for a new lizard species and found it in Vietnam — on a restaurant menu.

A colleague in Vietnam told Jesse Grismer last year about the possibility of a new species in Vietnam and sent him photos and tissue samples. Grismer tested the samples for mitochondrial DNA and realized they were probably dealing with something new.

Grismer went to Vietnam in search of the lizard with his father, Lee Grismer, a biology professor at La Sierra University in Riverside, Calif. They headed to a restaurant in the Ca Mau region on Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, where they had heard the lizard was on the menu.

The restaurant was all out of the lizard meat, but Grismer said he did eventually taste the new species of lizard, which they named after the scientist and family friend in Vietnam, Ngo Van Tri, who told them about it. It’s called Leilolepis ngovantrii.

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/12/26/2543671/leapin-lizards-a-new-species.html

Family Ties Bind Desert Lizards in Social Groups

ScienceDaily (Oct. 8, 2010) - Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have found that a species of lizard in the Mojave Desert lives in family groups and shows patterns of social behavior more commonly associated with mammals and birds. Their investigation of the formation and stability of family groups in desert night lizards (Xantusia vigilis) provides new insights into the evolution of cooperative behavior.


The researchers reported the results of a five-year study of desert night lizards in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (published October 6 online in advance of print).

Alison Davis, who led the study as a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley, said one of the unusual characteristics of desert night lizards is that they are viviparous, giving birth to live young instead of laying eggs. What really got her attention, however, was that both young and old lizards could be found huddling together every winter beneath fallen Joshua trees and other desert plant debris.

"This is remarkable, given the fact that in most species of lizards, individuals actively avoid each other," Davis said.

By conducting extensive genetic analyses of these winter social groups, the researchers found that young desert night lizards stay with their mother, father, and siblings for several years after birth. Some groups aggregated under the same fallen log year after year, forming what the researchers termed dynasties.

According to Davis, about 20 lizard species are thought to form family groups, and only two of those lay eggs. Viviparity (live birth) is crucial for the evolution of cooperative behaviors, she said.

"Viviparity provides the opportunity for prolonged interaction between the mother and offspring, which predisposes the animal to form a family group," Davis said. "The importance of parent-offspring interaction fits with what is currently understood about evolution of family groups and cooperative behaviors in birds and mammals."

In a classic study of animal social behavior published in 1995, Stephen Emlen of Cornell University described the evolution of family groups in birds and mammals and identified common themes and rules seen in both classes of animals. Davis's findings suggest that the same rules also apply to reptiles, which were not considered in Emlen's theory.

"Biologically, lizards are very different from both mammals and birds, yet a few species of lizards have evolved a social system around nuclear family members that is nearly identical to what we see in ground squirrels, primates, and woodpeckers," Davis said.

Coauthor Barry Sinervo, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC, said this similarity between widely separated groups of animals makes the findings particularly interesting. "Establishing a common pattern for how kin-based groups and cooperative behaviors evolve across different taxa gives us an invaluable tool. It helps us to predict where similar group behaviors may be found in other species," he said.

The researchers faced some daunting challenges in their quest to understand the family ties that bind desert night lizards. The first hurdle was to capture the lizards. Adults, which are three to five inches long from the snout to the tip of the tail, are not so hard to find. The babies, however, are tiny, about the weight of a toothpick, and perfectly camouflaged, with skin the color of the sand where they are typically found half buried.

"You have to know what you are looking for," Davis said. She and other graduate and undergraduate students in the Sinervo lab looked under hundreds of logs in search of their shy subjects over the course of five years. They eventually marked 2,120 individual lizards for use in the study.

The second challenge was to determine if lizards living in aggregations were actually related and, if so, how closely. Davis worked with Yann Surget-Groba of Bangor University (U.K.) to sort out DNA microsatellite information collected from each lizard aggregation. She recalled Surget-Groba's amazement when he finished his analysis on one particular aggregation of 13 lizards and exclaimed, "They're all related!"

In this paper, the researchers did not address the advantages of baby lizards staying with their mothers for the first few years of life. The young appear to feed themselves and receive no direct care from parents or other siblings. But Davis said that she suspects there are some survival advantages to the group living arrangement and plans to address that subject in a future paper."Determining the fitness consequences of kin-based social groups in this species will be an important next step," Sinervo said.

For now, Davis said she hopes that her study will broaden the appreciation of these unusual animals among scientists and the general public. "Anyone interested in animal social behaviors will be interested in this species," she said.

In addition to Davis and Sinervo, the coauthors of the paper include Ammon Corl of UC Santa Cruz and Yann Surget-Groba of Bangor University and the University of Geneva, Switzerland. The study was funded by a grant from the American Museum of Natural History; awards from the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and from the U.S. Department of Education; and an NSF postdoctoral fellowship in biology.


HerpDigest Volume # 10 #44 10/20/10‏

Family Ties Bind Desert Lizards in Social Groups

ScienceDaily (Oct. 8, 2010) - Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have found that a species of lizard in the Mojave Desert lives in family groups and shows patterns of social behavior more commonly associated with mammals and birds. Their investigation of the formation and stability of family groups in desert night lizards (Xantusia vigilis) provides new insights into the evolution of cooperative behavior.


The researchers reported the results of a five-year study of desert night lizards in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (published October 6 online in advance of print).

Alison Davis, who led the study as a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley, said one of the unusual characteristics of desert night lizards is that they are viviparous, giving birth to live young instead of laying eggs. What really got her attention, however, was that both young and old lizards could be found huddling together every winter beneath fallen Joshua trees and other desert plant debris.

"This is remarkable, given the fact that in most species of lizards, individuals actively avoid each other," Davis said.

By conducting extensive genetic analyses of these winter social groups, the researchers found that young desert night lizards stay with their mother, father, and siblings for several years after birth. Some groups aggregated under the same fallen log year after year, forming what the researchers termed dynasties.

According to Davis, about 20 lizard species are thought to form family groups, and only two of those lay eggs. Viviparity (live birth) is crucial for the evolution of cooperative behaviors, she said.

"Viviparity provides the opportunity for prolonged interaction between the mother and offspring, which predisposes the animal to form a family group," Davis said. "The importance of parent-offspring interaction fits with what is currently understood about evolution of family groups and cooperative behaviors in birds and mammals."

In a classic study of animal social behavior published in 1995, Stephen Emlen of Cornell University described the evolution of family groups in birds and mammals and identified common themes and rules seen in both classes of animals. Davis's findings suggest that the same rules also apply to reptiles, which were not considered in Emlen's theory.

"Biologically, lizards are very different from both mammals and birds, yet a few species of lizards have evolved a social system around nuclear family members that is nearly identical to what we see in ground squirrels, primates, and woodpeckers," Davis said.

Coauthor Barry Sinervo, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC, said this similarity between widely separated groups of animals makes the findings particularly interesting. "Establishing a common pattern for how kin-based groups and cooperative behaviors evolve across different taxa gives us an invaluable tool. It helps us to predict where similar group behaviors may be found in other species," he said.

The researchers faced some daunting challenges in their quest to understand the family ties that bind desert night lizards. The first hurdle was to capture the lizards. Adults, which are three to five inches long from the snout to the tip of the tail, are not so hard to find. The babies, however, are tiny, about the weight of a toothpick, and perfectly camouflaged, with skin the color of the sand where they are typically found half buried.

"You have to know what you are looking for," Davis said. She and other graduate and undergraduate students in the Sinervo lab looked under hundreds of logs in search of their shy subjects over the course of five years. They eventually marked 2,120 individual lizards for use in the study.

The second challenge was to determine if lizards living in aggregations were actually related and, if so, how closely. Davis worked with Yann Surget-Groba of Bangor University (U.K.) to sort out DNA microsatellite information collected from each lizard aggregation. She recalled Surget-Groba's amazement when he finished his analysis on one particular aggregation of 13 lizards and exclaimed, "They're all related!"

In this paper, the researchers did not address the advantages of baby lizards staying with their mothers for the first few years of life. The young appear to feed themselves and receive no direct care from parents or other siblings. But Davis said that she suspects there are some survival advantages to the group living arrangement and plans to address that subject in a future paper."Determining the fitness consequences of kin-based social groups in this species will be an important next step," Sinervo said.

For now, Davis said she hopes that her study will broaden the appreciation of these unusual animals among scientists and the general public. "Anyone interested in animal social behaviors will be interested in this species," she said.

In addition to Davis and Sinervo, the coauthors of the paper include Ammon Corl of UC Santa Cruz and Yann Surget-Groba of Bangor University and the University of Geneva, Switzerland. The study was funded by a grant from the American Museum of Natural History; awards from the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and from the U.S. Department of Education; and an NSF postdoctoral fellowship in biology.


HerpDigest Volume # 10 #44 10/20/10‏

New Gecko Species Identified in West African Rain Forests

RIGHT: The West African forest gecko, Hemidactylus fasciatus, is secretive but common in the tropical rain forest patches stretching nearly 3,000 miles from the coast of Sierra Leone to the Congo. Two post-docs -- former UC Berkeley students -- have now determined that the gecko is at least four distinct species scattered through isolated patches of forest across West Africa. (Credit: Charles Linkem)

ScienceDaily (June 1, 2010) — The West African forest gecko, a secretive but widely distributed species in forest patches from Ghana to Congo, is actually four distinct species that appear to have evolved over the past 100,000 years due to the fragmentation of a belt of tropical rain forest , according to a report in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The discovery by former University of California, Berkeley, students Adam D. Leaché and Matthew K. Fujita demonstrates the wealth of biodiversity still surviving in the islands of tropical rain forest in West Africa, and the ability of new DNA analysis techniques to distinguish different species, even when they look alike.

"We tended to find this gecko, Hemidactylus fasciatus, throughout our travels in West Africa," said Leaché, a herpetologist with UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. "Despite the fact that it is recognized as one species, using new methods we have established a high probability that it is composed of at least four species."

Though the forest fragmentation is part of a long-term drying trend in West Africa, the loss of forest and the resultant impact on the gecko is increasing as a result of human activity, he noted.

"These rain forests are classified as one of the biodiversity hotspots on the planet, yet they are one of the most endangered areas on the earth," Leaché said. "Human deforestation is accentuating the process of habitat destruction."

Leaché, currently a post-doctoral fellow at UC Davis but soon to become an assistant professor of biology at the University of Washington, has mounted five expeditions since 2003 to the tropical rain forests of West Africa to survey reptile and amphibian populations. All of the forest patches are isolated, some requiring hours of hiking to reach, and many are protected in national parks. Access was often difficult because he had to hire porters to carry liquid nitrogen with which to preserve tissue specimens of rare species, plus pickling containers in which to bring home more common animals, including the forest gecko.

"Out intent was to go to remote sites where people haven't done much exploration to try to document biodiversity in Africa," he said.

Having collected numerous specimens of the six-inch gecko, he and Fujita, who accompanied Leaché on several of the expeditions, decided to see whether genetic diversity among the geckos could tell them something about the history of the rain forest belt. That belt stretches nearly 3,000 miles from the coast of Sierra Leone through the Guinean rain forest in Ghana, through Nigeria and Cameroon, to the Congolian rain forest. Over millions of years, the forest has expanded and shrunk with climate change, and an aridification trend over the past several hundred thousand years has caused the forest to contract to mountainous areas, Leaché said.

Leaché and Fujita found sufficient genetic differences among the 50 geckos collected from 10 different forest patches to identify four distinct species. The different species were found in different forest patches, suggesting that the species divergence was driven by the isolation of gecko populations from one another after gaps developed in the rain forest.

Not all of the species were separated by forest gaps, however. The wide Sanaga River in Cameroon is the dividing line between two species, which the researchers named Hemidactylus coalescens and Hemidactylus eniangii, the latter in honor of Nigerian conservation biologist and herpetologist Dr. Edem A. Eniang.

They retained the name Hemidactylus fasciatus for the westernmost species, which ranges from Sierra Leone to the wide Dahomey Gap, but identified an isolated species, Hemidactylus kyaboboensis, in the Togo Hills, which they named after Kyabobo National Park in the Volta Region of Ghana.

A key component of their research was testing a different statistical method, called Bayesian species delimitation, that provides odds that researchers are correct when naming a new species.

"This method gives you a probability associated with the number of species identified, something we haven't been able to do in speciation research until now," Leaché said. "Before, it was more of a qualitative assessment. Here, we get a quantitative assessment, which is reassuring."

As a result, the researchers were able to state with high probability -- essentially 100 percent that the specimens break down into four species.

Fujita, formerly of UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and now a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology, took tissue samples from the specimens and conducted the Bayesian analysis. The analysis involved five genes from the cell nucleus and one gene from the mitochondria.

Leaché plans to continue his biodiversity survey of West Africa, but also to look more closely at the forest gecko to see what observable differences -- size, shape or scale arrangement, for example -- can be used to confirm and identify the four species.

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100601205756.htm

New Gecko Species Identified in West African Rain Forests

RIGHT: The West African forest gecko, Hemidactylus fasciatus, is secretive but common in the tropical rain forest patches stretching nearly 3,000 miles from the coast of Sierra Leone to the Congo. Two post-docs -- former UC Berkeley students -- have now determined that the gecko is at least four distinct species scattered through isolated patches of forest across West Africa. (Credit: Charles Linkem)

ScienceDaily (June 1, 2010) — The West African forest gecko, a secretive but widely distributed species in forest patches from Ghana to Congo, is actually four distinct species that appear to have evolved over the past 100,000 years due to the fragmentation of a belt of tropical rain forest , according to a report in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The discovery by former University of California, Berkeley, students Adam D. Leaché and Matthew K. Fujita demonstrates the wealth of biodiversity still surviving in the islands of tropical rain forest in West Africa, and the ability of new DNA analysis techniques to distinguish different species, even when they look alike.

"We tended to find this gecko, Hemidactylus fasciatus, throughout our travels in West Africa," said Leaché, a herpetologist with UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. "Despite the fact that it is recognized as one species, using new methods we have established a high probability that it is composed of at least four species."

Though the forest fragmentation is part of a long-term drying trend in West Africa, the loss of forest and the resultant impact on the gecko is increasing as a result of human activity, he noted.

"These rain forests are classified as one of the biodiversity hotspots on the planet, yet they are one of the most endangered areas on the earth," Leaché said. "Human deforestation is accentuating the process of habitat destruction."

Leaché, currently a post-doctoral fellow at UC Davis but soon to become an assistant professor of biology at the University of Washington, has mounted five expeditions since 2003 to the tropical rain forests of West Africa to survey reptile and amphibian populations. All of the forest patches are isolated, some requiring hours of hiking to reach, and many are protected in national parks. Access was often difficult because he had to hire porters to carry liquid nitrogen with which to preserve tissue specimens of rare species, plus pickling containers in which to bring home more common animals, including the forest gecko.

"Out intent was to go to remote sites where people haven't done much exploration to try to document biodiversity in Africa," he said.

Having collected numerous specimens of the six-inch gecko, he and Fujita, who accompanied Leaché on several of the expeditions, decided to see whether genetic diversity among the geckos could tell them something about the history of the rain forest belt. That belt stretches nearly 3,000 miles from the coast of Sierra Leone through the Guinean rain forest in Ghana, through Nigeria and Cameroon, to the Congolian rain forest. Over millions of years, the forest has expanded and shrunk with climate change, and an aridification trend over the past several hundred thousand years has caused the forest to contract to mountainous areas, Leaché said.

Leaché and Fujita found sufficient genetic differences among the 50 geckos collected from 10 different forest patches to identify four distinct species. The different species were found in different forest patches, suggesting that the species divergence was driven by the isolation of gecko populations from one another after gaps developed in the rain forest.

Not all of the species were separated by forest gaps, however. The wide Sanaga River in Cameroon is the dividing line between two species, which the researchers named Hemidactylus coalescens and Hemidactylus eniangii, the latter in honor of Nigerian conservation biologist and herpetologist Dr. Edem A. Eniang.

They retained the name Hemidactylus fasciatus for the westernmost species, which ranges from Sierra Leone to the wide Dahomey Gap, but identified an isolated species, Hemidactylus kyaboboensis, in the Togo Hills, which they named after Kyabobo National Park in the Volta Region of Ghana.

A key component of their research was testing a different statistical method, called Bayesian species delimitation, that provides odds that researchers are correct when naming a new species.

"This method gives you a probability associated with the number of species identified, something we haven't been able to do in speciation research until now," Leaché said. "Before, it was more of a qualitative assessment. Here, we get a quantitative assessment, which is reassuring."

As a result, the researchers were able to state with high probability -- essentially 100 percent that the specimens break down into four species.

Fujita, formerly of UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and now a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology, took tissue samples from the specimens and conducted the Bayesian analysis. The analysis involved five genes from the cell nucleus and one gene from the mitochondria.

Leaché plans to continue his biodiversity survey of West Africa, but also to look more closely at the forest gecko to see what observable differences -- size, shape or scale arrangement, for example -- can be used to confirm and identify the four species.

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100601205756.htm