What is it about?
Here we tested a simple prediction that bright green chameleons introduced from Africa to Hawaii would evolve brighter colors in the absence of visual predators that had evolved along with these lizards and can detect and kill the brightest individuals in the forest.
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Photo by Tim Stief on Unsplash
Why is it important?
We have done a lot of work on the basic behavioral ecology in terms of feeding preferences and movement patterns, and have modeled their negative impacts on endangered island invertebrates, but we are now starting to investigate how novel evolutionary forces can also act on invasive populations, resulting in adaptations that increase their fitness.
Perspectives
I have worked on invasive species in Hawaii for more than two decades. It is rewarding to see that many of our studies are now coming full circle from basic identification of the appearance of new nonnative species, then understanding how they spread and what their impacts are and will be, and proposing and testing control methods, to now investigating how the same unique environmental factors that have led to explosive adaptive radiations in natural island colonizations are at play on lineages that have been released instead by anthropogenic mechanisms.
Dr Brenden Holland
Hawaii Pacific University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Invasive chameleons released from predation display more conspicuous colors, Science Advances, May 2022, American Association for the Advancement of Science,
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn2415.
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