I’m down in the Dominican Republic along with graduate students Daniel Scantlebury and Anthony Geneva. We’ve enjoyed some excellent lizard hunting thusfar and have plenty of new samples for our study of ecological speciation in Hispaniolan trunk anoles. The photos above are from two recent hikes. On the left, Anthony and I are exploring a gully in the river that runs along the Recodo Road (a region that has fascinated anole biologists for decades). On the right is a shot of Dan and Anthony heading toward a patch of forest on the other side of a denuded ridge just north of Bani. Wireless internet has reached Bani, so we hope to have post stories and photos regularly on our lab webpage. We’ll be back in a bit more than a week, hopefully with plenty of lizards in tow!
Author Archives: Rich Glor
Application Deadline this Weekend
It’s not too late to apply to our PhD program – we’re accepting applications until January 1st. More details on applying are here.
Anolis distichus Graces Cover of Latest PNAS
A paper that I wrote with Dan Rabosky at UC Berkeley came out in yesterday’s PNAS. We’re excited about the results of the study and the new methods introduced in our paper. I’m also psyched by the fact that the cover features one of my favorite animals: Anolis distichus vinosus from Tiburon Peninsula in Haiti. Anolis distichus is a highly geographically variable species that is the focus of ongoing work in the Glor lab by graduate students Julienne Ng and Anthony Geneva, as well as star undergraduates Audrey Kelly and Ryane Logsdon. The little bugger in this photo just could not resist the urge to display right in front of my face (the photo was taken from about two feet away with a 105mm macro lens). I’m including a large image of the cover in this post because the versions available via PNAS.org are really low quality and do little justice to the beauty of this animal.
UPDATE: More information about our article can be found in a related press release and on the Anole Annals blog.
Holiday Party Tomorrow (Friday)
The party will begin at 3:00 PM.
Santa’s sleigh touches down at 4:30, so please have your kids ready.
Do you have an amusing gift for someone in the department? Drop it off in the front office before the party!
Finger foods are appreciated! Please remember to sign up in the main office.
We are collecting items for The Open Door Mission and Golisano Children’s Hospital. Please bring a canned good or other item listed at the website below. We will have boxes set up in the Main Office this week or you may drop them off at the party.
Study Break Breakfast Tomorrow (Tuesday)
This event is being conducted in conjunction with a food drive for Foodlink. All food items to be donated must be: (1) in their original, unopened packages, (2) within the expiration date on the package, (3) in plastic jars or containers, not glass, (4) no homemade food items can be accepted, (5) non-food items that are new or in gently used condition only.
Items can be dropped off to the donation barrel which will be available in Hutchison 341 between Wednesday 12/8/10 to 11am on Wednesday 12/15/10.
Coffee Break Today (Monday)
Coffee served today will be better than the stuff we drank at Haitian markets...
Joins us for the usual coffee and conversation this afternoon at 3:30 in the graduate student lounge.
EEB Seminar: Rob Laport on Speciation in the Creosote Bush
Happy Hour Today (Friday)
Words of Wisdom from Nelson Hairston Sr.
Quinn has been entertaining us with insightful quotes by the famous ecologist, Nelson Hairston Sr. Some of the best can be found in an obituary published a few years ago in Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, including:
“If p is less than 0.01, you worked too hard.”
“If it’s not worth doing; it’s not worth doing well.”
“Some ecologists find mathematics easier than useful scientific work.”
Speciation Reading Group, Dec 13
Next Monday at 2PM we will be discussing a review of speciation in Ficedula flycatchers from a special issue of Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B on the “genomics of speciation” [doi link]. Decades of intense work on Ficedula provides much fodder for discussion. Given that the paper is a review, I was going to suggest we read a companion paper with original research; however, I think it might be more interesting if everyone makes a point to check out one or two cited papers that they find particularly intriguing. (Given our recent discussions of reinforcement, I’m personally keen to check out Servedio et al.’s 2009 paper on reinforcement and learning from a special issue of Evolutionary Ecology on “speciation: from diversification to reproductive isolation.”)