{"id":74171,"date":"2018-08-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-scientist-long-legged-lizards-better-adapted-for-hurricane-survival\/"},"modified":"2018-08-16T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T00:00:00","slug":"uri-scientist-long-legged-lizards-better-adapted-for-hurricane-survival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2018\/08\/uri-scientist-long-legged-lizards-better-adapted-for-hurricane-survival\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 scientist:  Long-legged lizards better adapted  for hurricane survival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 August 16, 2018 \u2013 Jason Kolbe has been thinking about hurricanes and lizards for many years.<\/p>\n<p>The 溏心vlog免费B站 professor of biological sciences has measured the length of lizard legs and the size of their toe pads to assess how those factors influence the animal\u2019s ability to cling to vegetation during strong storms. He even used a powerful leaf blower to test his hypotheses in a laboratory.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think a lot about this,\u201d he said. \u201cWe know that longer limbs and more muscular limbs enable lizards to wrap their arms around branches and get a better grip on the vegetation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But until the perfect storm of circumstances arose last year, he was never able to field test his ideas.<\/p>\n<p>A postdoctoral colleague at Harvard University happened to measure the limb length and toe pads of lizards on the Turks and Caicos Islands just four days before Hurricane Irma swept through with 165-mile-per-hour winds last September. Two weeks later, Hurricane Maria followed suit.<\/p>\n<p>The storms provided the scientists with the unusual opportunity to see how hurricanes affect the evolution of the lizards. So Kolbe\u2019s colleague returned to the islands to measure the surviving lizards just weeks after the hurricanes. Their findings were published last month in the journal <em>Nature<\/em>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"oembed oembed-youtube-com\" style=\"\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aKvKd1SozOc\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Natural selection in a hurricane: The lizards that won&#039;t let go\" width=\"1000\" height=\"563\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aKvKd1SozOc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>\u201cOur previous studies suggested that lizards with longer limbs and larger toe pads can cling better, so we expected that the lizards that survived the storms would be those with longer limbs and larger toe pads,\u201d Kolbe said. \u201cAnd our prediction was supported for the toe pads and the forelimbs. But the survivors had shorter hind limbs, which was a surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When the researchers watched the videos they previously made of their experiment with the lizards and the leaf blower, they understood why the surviving lizards had shorter hind limbs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen the lizards start to get blown by the wind, their hind limbs lose contact with the vegetation first, so they\u2019re holding on only with their forelimbs,\u201d he explained. \u201cWhen they\u2019re perched on vegetation, their hind limbs stick out and catch the wind. It turns out that lizards with shorter hind limbs have an advantage in a hurricane.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What does all this have to do with evolution?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe event we documented seems to be about natural selection. Some lizards lived, some lizards died,\u201d Kolbe said. \u201cTo translate that to evolutionary change, those surviving lizards have to reproduce and those traits \u2013 longer forelimbs, larger toe pads \u2013 have to be passed on to their offspring. So we\u2019re going back this fall to measure the offspring produced by the surviving lizards.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the 溏心vlog免费B站 scientist is confident the offspring of the surviving lizards will have many of the traits that made their parents successful at surviving hurricanes, there may be other factors at work pushing them to evolve in different \u2013 even opposite \u2013 ways.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s natural selection doing when there isn\u2019t a hurricane?\u201d asked Kolbe. \u201cWhat traits are favored under non-hurricane circumstances? Do their longer limbs now put them at a disadvantage? In between hurricanes, shorter limbs may be favored for moving around on the narrow vegetation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It may take several generations of lizards and several years between hurricanes for all the questions to be answered. And even then, the expected increase in severe storms due to the changing climate will likely raise even more questions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the past, when there has been a long period of time between hurricanes, the populations recover and natural selection might act to take them back to some optimal state for their environment,\u201d Kolbe said. \u201cBut if hurricanes keep hitting the island more frequently \u2013 making them more susceptible to extinction \u2013 selection may start to act in a back and forth fashion, and at some point they might not be able to respond effectively from an evolutionary sense.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s the bigger message,\u201d he added. \u201cMost populations are experiencing multiple stressors \u2013 climate change, habitat change, invasive species \u2013 and all those changes are pulling populations in different directions. They might be able to adapt to one of those, but others are forcing them to adapt in another direction. They may end up using up all of their evolutionary fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 August 16, 2018 \u2013 Jason Kolbe has been thinking about hurricanes and lizards for many years. The 溏心vlog免费B站 professor of biological sciences has measured the length of lizard legs and the size of their toe pads to assess how those factors influence the animal\u2019s ability to cling to vegetation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-74171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-the-environment-and-life-sciences"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}