From Tiny Spines to Sticky Toes: What Cyrtodactylus Geckos Can Tell Us about the Evolution of Stickiness in Lizards
Like anoles, geckos are famous for their adhesive toepads, enabling astonishing climbing abilities. Since adhesive toepads evolved independently in geckos and anoles, these two…
From Tiny Spines to Sticky Toes: What Cyrtodactylus Geckos Can Tell Us about the Evolution of Stickiness in Lizards
Like anoles, geckos are famous for their adhesive toepads, enabling astonishing climbing abilities. Since adhesive toepads evolved independently in geckos and anoles, these two rather distantly related lizard clades have become the poster-children of convergent evolution in climbing. But, astonishingly, how such a complex system actually evolves has until recently garnered little attention. And while anoles have long been celebrated for their sticky pads, the literature tends to treat the spectacular adhesive system in a binary fashion as either being present (full pads) or absent (pad‑less) in geckos– despite the fact that earlier research already indicated that this might not be the case.
