The study was published in the July 5, 2001 issue of Nature. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation. Amazing to the researchers was the fact that there was any survival at all on the islands. Hurricane Floyd was a Category IV hurricane with maximum winds greater than 150 miles per hour that blew lizards off the islands or immersed them in a ten feet wall of water.
A previous study by the same authors, published in Science in 1998, had shown that a catastrophic hurricane could exterminate lizard populations. When they returned to the islands this time a month after Hurricane Floyd has passed, they expected to find the same result. Much to their surprise, not only were the populations not extinct, but all of the survivors were baby lizards that must have hatched since the hurricane.
They surmised that, as with the previous hurricane, although all lizards present on the island were swept away or drowned, lizard eggs must have been able to survive the hurricane and give rise to a next generation.
"l don't think anyone would have predicted that lizard eggs could survive immersion in saltwater for six hours," says Losos, who has duplicated the salty conditions in the laboratory and has found that eggs less than ten days old hatch well when put in salt water for that long.
The researchers have three possible explanations for the greater number of lizards on islands on which the predators were not present. One, on islands with the predator, the populations of the prey species already were significantly declining before the hurricane, making extinction easier.
Moreover, surviving curly-tailed lizards could have further reduced the anole populations after the hurricane. However, this expla
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Contact: Susan Killenberg McGinn
susan_killenberg@aismail.wustl.edu
314-935-5254
Washington University in St. Louis
11-Jul-2001