Scientists have discovered a new species of lizard.
Like the chameleon lizard Large Antillean Anolis were initially identified and photographed a few decades ago.
In the end, she became one of the first species found in the Dominican Republic. “As soon as I saw the photo I immediately thought that I should buy a ticket to the Dominican Republic,” says Luke Mahler Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and lead author of the article about the discovery, which was published today online in the journal “American Naturalist”.
In addition, the new varieties could help to connect a long-standing mystery about how exactly looked like lizards that live in the Caribbean. “I got a grainy photo from a local naturalist Miguel Landestoy, which saw a nesting pair of birds, attacking the crowd at the office. He saw that they flew around the proposed facility, considering that this is a new kind of largely hidden Anolis”, – stated in the message.
Several years after the first photographs, Landestoy caught one of the lizards, photographed it, and sent a good image by e-mail to Mahler, as well as several other researchers, with whom he worked. “As soon as I opened the e-mail, I do not understand what kind,” says Mahler.
The greater Antilles Anolis is an example from a textbook phenomenon known as copy adaptive radiation, the essence of which is that related species have diverse development. Examples of this could be bright green lizards. Although most lizard species of the greater Antilles Anolis may be a copy on another island, scientists have long known about this fact, but most of the group was the exception to the rule.
The most notable among these unique lizards, the Cuban Anolis Chamaeleolis from the group. Chamaeleolis anoles less like a typical anoles, but rather relate to the chameleon: big, mysterious, slow, and prone to cling to the high cover of lichens and trees of the rainforest.
