After a very long and
tortuous path, our paper on CTmin finally came out today in The American Naturalist. If you are interested in reading it, here is a pdf. This is one of those studies that requires an in-house description
to fully appreciate its content, particularly because two of my friends were
critical players in the story of this project’s development. As they did their
best to convince me that it was not such of a great idea to expend energy on
this study.
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| Ray Huey and Manuel Leal at the Anolis Symposium |
Although, both of my
attempts to get my friends on board with this project failed to produce a
positive response, I decided to go ahead and prove them wrong, in part, because
one of an advisor’s jobs is to keep the students (Alex) humble. So, after a few
more discussions, Alex agreed that I would bring A. cristatellus from Miami (he was not going to waste his time) and
that we would measure CTmin to compare to his data from Puerto Rico. In March
of 2010, I went to Miami to collect a series of individuals of A. cristatellus. Nearly two weeks after
collection, Alex and I got together to measure CTmin. Because Alex was still so
skeptical, we decided to make a friendly wager, which is commonly in the form
of a free lunch or dinner in our lab. If lizards from Miami had a lower CTmin
than lizards from Puerto Rico, Alex would treat me to a nice lunch; however, if
Alex was correct, I would be treating him to several lunches (needless to say,
I felt that this was money in the bank). After measuring a few lizards, it was clear, the individuals from
Miami were active at temperatures at which individuals from Puerto Rico were
like popsicles. Below is the original graph, which got me a free lunch and
which was of the first version of this paper when it was submitted to review.
In a nutshell, we found
differences in CTmin between populations. After collecting data on CTmin during
the fall, we submitted the MS. However, although both reviewers found the
manuscript promising (see below), they asked for additional data, including
CTmax for both populations.
REVIEW SUMMARY
"
To summarize, this is a promising study that suggests that (i) cold tolerance
has diverged genetically between populations of lizards in merely 30 generations,
and (ii) that thermal changes can result in rapid evolutionary responses in
tropical species. If the authors could provide the additional data required to
solidify these suggestions, a revised manuscript could make an important
contribution."
We moved forward and
collected the additional data, some of which is shown below in a new figure.
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| Figure 2 from paper, showing differences in CTmin, note the values are the same as those of the original figure. |
In the end, this has
turned out to be an interesting story. It is one of those cases in which the
results are what you should expect when you "think like a lizard". On
one hand, Ray is correct -- physiology seems to be relatively rigid because
behavior buffers the lizards from selection. But for a sleeping anole, over a
leaf in a winter night, behavior is not such a useful buffer. Thus, we might
have found the Achilles heel of behavior. It has also provided the opportunity
for Alex to reflect on his initial viewpoint, and to learn that maybe once in a
while it is ok to listen to your advisor. So it turns out that "el que ríe ultimo, ríe mejor"
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