(Vff -CLa\-nbr.c(^€ J ,.-,US. COMP. ZOOL LIBRARY B R E V I O RepAi969 MmseiiiiiM of Contiparsitive ZooiogysiTY. Cambridge, Mass. 15 September, 1969 Number 327 THE ANGLES OF LA PALMA: ASPECTS OF THEIR ECOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS A. Stanley Rand' and Ernest E. Williams Abstract. The ecological relationships of the anoles known from a lo-cality in the Cordillera Central of the Dominican Republic are described in terms of the climatic and structural habitats found useful in describing these relationships for the anoles of the Hispaniolan lowlands and of other West Indian islands. The montane fauna of the central Dominican Republic is closest both ecologically and phyletically to the montane fauna of the southwestern portion of Hispaniola. Discrepancies may be due to incom-plete knowledge of these montane faunas, which have only recently been carefully collected. Both the Hispaniolan montane faunas are now relict, although locally occurring in dense populations. INTRODUCTION Reports of the ecological relationships of closely related sympat-ric species provide one of the basic lodes of raw material for studies of competition, adaptive radiation, and evolution. This paper, concentrating on a relict population of montane anoles in Hispaniola, is one of several describing the ecological relations among sympatric anoles at various places in the West Indies (e.g. Ruibal, 1961; Collette, 1961; Rand, 1962, 1964, 1967b; Rand and Rand, 1967; Schoener, 1967, 1968; Schoener and Gor-man, 1968). It fills an important gap in the series and is pre-liminary to a study comparing the patterns of ecological adapta-tion shown by anoles in different areas and discussing their evolu-tionary significance. The area we chose for study — La Palma in the Cordillera Central of the Dominican Republic — is one in which there are small relict patches of broad-leaf montane forest surrounded by ^Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Canal Zone.
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