Lizards, toepads, and the ghost of hurricanes past

Hurricanes wreak destruction when they strike reefs, islands, and coastal regions. Forests are scrambled into giant piles of pickup sticks. Animals are killed by flooding, falling trees, and blowing debris, and some survivors later die from starvation or disease. However, some animals survive. Were they just lucky, or did they have a trait that gave them an advantage over the others? Caribbean Anolis lizards that survived two hurricanes in 2017 had relatively large toepads; perhaps they were better able to hold fast to arboreal perches during storms (1) (Fig. 1). In PNAS, Donihue et al. (2) now report a follow-up study and show that offspring of 2017 survivors also had large toepads, strongly suggesting a genetically based shift. Furthermore, they evaluated whether the toepad × hurricane pattern would hold for other species of Anolis in the Neotropics. It does, suggesting that toepad size may serve as a morphological signature of the ghost of hurricanes past.Fig. 1. A composite photograph showing Anolis carolinensis clinging to a perch while blasted from hurricane-force winds from a leaf blower (1). When the blower was turned on, lizards did not flee but rather moved to the lee side of the perch before progressively losing their grip (usually, hind feet first). Image credit: Colin Donihue (photographer).Like many innovative studies, this one began serendipitously (1). Back in 2017, conservation biologists were planning to remove invasive rats from two small islands in the Caribbean. Colin Donihue, Anthony Herrel, and colleagues joined the group to evaluate whether rat eradication might affect the native lizard Anolis scriptus on two islands in the Turks and Caicos group, Water Cay and Pine Cay. They measured toepad size and limb length, traits known to affect locomotion and clinging ability (3, 4). Just 6 d after the group finished their survey and scampered … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: hueyrb{at}uw.edu or prgrant{at}princeton.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1