 Lizards with bigger, grippier toe pads are more likely to survive after their islands are hit by hurricanes. Big toe pads may help the lizards that have them hang on for dear life and survive the high winds of a hurricane. These sticky-toed survivors will then be the ones to successfully reproduce and pass on their genes, giving rise to a new generation of lizards with a vice-like grip, according to a new paper published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Show This observation is textbook natural selection, but it suggests that a bout of extreme weather is enough to change the evolutionary fortunes of a species—something many evolutionary biologists had assumed wasn’t possible, reports Nick Carne in Cosmos. Ecologists previously thought that once life returned to normal following the natural disaster, whatever special adaptations might have been temporarily useful amid the catastrophe would fade out. A circumscribed version of these findings appeared in a 2018 research paper dealing with a single species of anole lizards on the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos following Hurricanes Irma and Maria. “This is a striking case of rapid evolution, which, as we can see here, can proceed exceedingly fast, even within a generation,” Carol Lee, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the research, told Ed Yong of the Atlantic in 2018. “I expect there will be many more cases like this in the future, where catastrophic events impose strong selection on populations, and where populations will need to evolve or go extinct.” The researchers wanted to follow up on those 2018 results to see if what they saw on Turks and Caicos might be true elsewhere. To find out, the team used photos from natural history collections to measure a lot of lizard feet—some 188 different anole lizard species were assessed. Next the researchers compared those measurements to seven decades of hurricane data to see if there was any connection between toe pad size and stormy weather. The team’s earlier finding held up. They found that lizards have larger toe pads in places that have been hit by multiple hurricanes in the last 70 years. This was true across 188 different species of anole scattered across the Caribbean as well as Central and South America. In locales that hurricanes spared, lizards’ toe pads were smaller, reports Joshua Sokol for the New York Times. If, as climate research suggests, hurricanes become more severe because of climate change, will these lizards’ toes just keep getting bigger and bigger? “These toe pads are not going to turn into big snowshoes, or something like that. There's a balance,” says Colin Donihue, first author on the paper and evolutionary ecologist at Washington University in St. Louis, in a statement. “Most of the selective pressure is to just be good at being a lizard: to go catch food, find a mate and avoid predators." A future full of powerful hurricanes may have evolutionary implications for other species as well, Donihue tells Ryan Prior of CNN. “My best guess is that this isn’t just a lizard thing,” says Donihue in a statement. Studies of trees, snails or birds in the Caribbean could be next in line. “We need more such studies,” Craig Benkman, an ecologist at the University of Wyoming who helped peer review the paper, tells the Times. “And unfortunately, we are likely to be overwhelmed with opportunities in the coming decades.” Recommended Videos Strong hurricanes can leave a trail of destruction and hardships to remember them by, but new research shows that these powerful storms also give lizards a long-lasting gift: larger toepads. Evidence shows that Anolis lizards that frequently deal with hurricanes have larger toepads than those that experience fewer hurricanes, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This is the first paper to indicate hurricanes act as an agent of natural selection, Colin Donihue, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in biology in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, told McClatchy News. “Was this a one-off event, or is this actually a pattern that occurs more broadly across lizards as a whole that are affected by hurricanes?” Donihue said. “It depends, but evolutionary changes can happen much more quickly than we ever previously appreciated.” Donihue and his colleagues were roaming the Turks and Caicos islands in 2017, catching anole lizards for a separate study when Hurricane Irma struck the islands with Category 5 winds up to 170 mph. Two weeks later, Hurricane Maria, another Category 5 storm, released her wrath on the region.
Katie Camero is a McClatchy National Real-Time Science reporter. She’s an alumna of Boston University and has reported for the Wall Street Journal, Science, and The Boston Globe. What adaptations do anole lizards have?In 15 years, these lizards' toe pads have become larger, with more sticky scales on their feet. The study's authors say these adaptations are a response to an invasive species, the brown anole (Anolis sagrei), that came from Cuba and arrived via agricultural shipments coming to South Florida in the 1950s.
What features of the Turks and Caicos anole lizard made some better suited to survive a hurricane?We finished a survey of the Turks and Caicos anole just before the populations were battered by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. When we revisited the islands six weeks later, we found that lizards with larger toepads, longer arms, and shorter legs had survived the storms.
How smart is an anole?Reptiles have long been thought to be dim-witted, but a new study in Biology Letters finds that the Puerto Rican anole, a type of lizard, can match birds in smarts.
Why are there so many species of anoles and how did they evolve?Despite these differences, all have evolved from the same ancestor as lizards. Spreading through the Americas, one lizard group, the anoles, evolved like Darwin's finches, adapting to different islands and different habitats on the mainland. Today there are more than 400 species.
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Is there evidence that anoles have adaptations allowing them to survive better in hurricanes?
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