User:Laurie Vitt

Laurie Joseph Vitt (born August 20, 1945) is an American biologist with primary interests in herpetology, ecology, and behavior. His textbook, Herpetology, An Introductory Biology of Amphibians and Reptiles, co-authored with his wife, Janalee P. Caldwell is in its 4th Edition after a successful collaboration with George Zug, who initiated the series. More than 280 published research articles, several books, and numerous popular articles on the biology of lizards and snakes have established him as a prominent figure in his field.

Younger Days

Vitt was born in Bremerton, Washington just before the end of World War II in 1945. His father was a professional musician and school teacher and his mother was also a school teacher. Shortly after he was born, the family moved to Billings, Montana. By the time he was 5 years old, he and his older brother Bill Vitt, now a well known musician and recording artist, had been taking private music lessons, to be followed by his younger brother Mickey Vitt, who would later steer away from music to pursue a successful career in the auto glass business. From the time he was 5 years old, Vitt had an interest in biology, bringing home every imaginable animal that occurred near Billings. He was able to finance most of his education as a rock musician during the 1960s and 1970s. During that time, his groups released five records. One (Summer is Over) was released nationally on Time Mainstream Records from New York and was a pick hit in Record World Magazine. Another (I'm Walking Babe) released on Panorama Records from Seattle became a garage band hit in the Pacific Northwest. He maintains an interest in music and biology to this day.

Education

Vitt graduated from Western Washington College of Education (B.A., 1967; now Western Washington University), received a Master’s of Science degree from Western Washington (1971), and a Ph.D. from Arizona State University (1976). While at ASU, he was influenced by visiting Maytag Professor Donald W. Tinkle and two graduate students, Justin D. Congdon and Richard Van Loben Sels.

Career

In 1977, Vitt accepted a postdoctoral position with Paulo E. Vanzolini, one of the most influential vertebrate biologists in South America at the time. Dr. Vanzolini was and remains best known by most Brazilians as a Samba writer. Vitt spent a year in the field in a remote region of the semi-arid Caatinga of Brazil studying the ecology and reproductive biology of lizards. Here, he ran into a former acquaintance, Michael Mares, whose graduate students Thomas Lacher and Michael Willig were conducting research in the Caatinga. After returning to the US, Vitt spent a year at the University of Michigan as a post-doc with Tinkle, then a year as a post-doc at the University of Georgia with Joshua Laerm, and finally a year as a Research Ecologist at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory near Aiken, South Carolina, working with Becky Sharitz, J. Whitfield Gibbons, Ray Semlitsch, and Joe Pechmann on the long-term amphibian monitoring project initiated by Janalee Caldwell.

In 1982, Vitt accepted a faculty position in the Biology Department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he was advanced to Professor in just eight years. He then (1990) accepted a position as Curator at the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (now the Sam Noble Museum) and Professor in the Zoology Department (now the Biology Department) on the University of Oklahoma Campus in Norman. Mike Mares was the Museum Director and was able to convince Vitt that he would become part of one of the finest university museums in the country (which existed only in Mares’ mind at the time, but exists in that capacity today). Vitt would spend 21 years at the Museum and as a member of the faculty in the Zoology Department before retiring in 2011.

Vitt has used lizards as model organisms to investigate conceptual topics in life history evolution, social behavior, and community ecology, to mention a few. In 1982, he began a career-long collaboration with William E. Cooper, Jr., investigating social behavior in skinks of the southeastern United States. This led to behavioral research on a number of other lizard species as well as some frogs. He spent more than 20 years conducting biodiversity research in remote areas of South and Central America, primarily the Amazon Basin with his wife Janalee P. Caldwell. Because of his interests in community ecology, he began collaborations with Eric Pianka, in which they combined large similar sets of data to investigate underlying determinants of ecological traits of lizards on a global scale. They (along with additional collaborators) used existing phylogenetic hypotheses of lizard relationships to reconstruct the evolution of ecological traits. Although recent molecular phylogenies change some of their interpretations, many details remain unchanged and the primary conclusion, that many ecological traits are historical, stands today.

A snake (Liophis vitti) and a parasitic roundworm (Oswaldocruzi vitti) have been named in his honor and he has been involved in the discovery and naming of one lizard genus (Chatogecko), two lizard species (Neusticurus juruazensis and Cnemidophorus mumbuca) and four parasitic worms (Allopharynx daileyi, Oswaldocruzia nicaraguensis, Rhabdias nicaraguensis, and Alaeuris rinconensis)

Vitt has contributed to the training of American, Brazilian, Ecuadorian, and Mexican scientists. Several of his former graduate students or Post Doctoral scholars hold university positions in the United States (Stephen Secor, Roger Anderson, Richard Durtsche, Chris Tracy, Paul Gier, Peter Zani, Sean Menke), Mexico (Aurelio Ramírez-Bautista), and Brazil (Guarino Colli, Gabriel Costa). Other students hold positions with the Federal Government (Jeff Howland and Shawn Sartorius).

Awards and Honors

Vitt was elected as corresponding member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Rio de Janeiro in 1986 and nominated to the American Society of Naturalists in 1988. He was awarded a George Lynn Cross Research Professorship at the University of Oklahoma in 2003, the highest research honor that a faculty member can receive from the University of Oklahoma. He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award, College of Sciences and Technologies at Western Washington University in Bellingham in 2007. In August of 2012 he received a Distinguished Herpetologist Award from the Herpetologists’ League, presented at the World Congress of Herpetology, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

He received the Director’s Research Award in Recognition of Outstanding and Sustained Research Productivity and the Director’s Special Award for Service Beyond the Call..., for design and development of the exhibit, The World of George Miksch Sutton, in the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, both in 2000.

His book, Lizards: Windows to the Evolution of Diversity published in 2003 by the University of California Press, Berkeley and coauthored with Eric Pianka won the 2004 Oklahoma Book Award in the non-fiction category, given by the Oklahoma Center for the Book and the Grand Prize at the 9th Annual (2005) Robert W. Hamilton Book Awards Ceremony at the University of Texas, Austin.

Works

Vitt has authored or coauthored more than 280 research articles and numerous popular articles. His textbook, Herpetology: An Introductory Biology of Amphibians and Reptiles, co-authored with Janalee Caldwell is in its Fourth Edition. His book Lizards: Windows to the Evolution of Diversity, co-authored with Eric Pianka has won two prestigious book awards (see above). Published books include:

Vitt, LJ and JP Caldwell. 2015. Herpetology: An Introductory Biology of Amphibians and Reptiles. Fourth Edition. Academic (Elsevier) Press, San Diego. (L. J. Vitt, and J. P. Caldwell).

Vitt, LJ, TCS Avila-Pires, WE Magnusson, and AP Lima. 2008. Guide to the Lizards of the Reserva Adolpho Ducke (in English and Portuguese). Áttema Design Editorial Ltd., Manaus, Brasil. (L. J. Vitt,

Pianka, ER and LJ Vitt. 2003. Lizards: Windows to the Evolution of Diversity. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Zug, GR, LJ Vitt, and JP Caldwell 2001. Herpetology: An Introductory Biology of Amphibians and Reptiles. Second Edition. Academic Press, San Diego.

Vitt, LJ and S Torre 1996. Guia para la Investigacion de las Lagartijas de Cuyabeno—A Research Guide to the Lizards of Cuyabeno. Centro de Biodiversidad y Ambiente, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Publisher, Quito, Ecuador.

Vitt, LJ and ER Pianka, editors. 1994. Lizard Ecology: Historical and Experimental Perspectives. Princeton University Press.

Wright, JW and LJ Vitt, editors. 1993. Biology of Whiptail Lizards, Genus Cnemidophorus. Special Publication of the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (J. W. Wright and L. J. Vitt, Co-editors).

Vanzolini, PE, AMM Ramos-Costa, and LJ Vitt. 1980. Répteis das Caatingas. Academia Brasileira de Ciências, Publisher, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Selected Articles

Vitt, LJ, JD Congdon, and NA Dickson. 1977. Adaptive strategies and energetics of tail autotomy in lizards. Ecology 58:326-337.

Vitt, LJ, and JD Congdon. 1978. Body shape, reproductive effort, and relative clutch mass in lizards: resolution of a paradox. American Naturalist 112:595-608.

Vitt, LJ. 1981. Lizard reproduction: habitat specificity and constraints on relative clutch mass. American Naturalist 117:506-514.

Vitt, LJ, and DG Blackburn. 1983. Reproduction in the lizard Mabuya heathi (Scincidae): a commentary on viviparity in New World Mabuya. Canadian Journal of Zoology 61:2798-2806.

Blackburn, DG, LJ Vitt, and CA Beuchat. 1984. Eutherian-like reproductive specializations in a viviparous reptile. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA) 81:4860-4863.

Vitt, LJ, and WE Cooper, Jr. 1985. The evolution of sexual dimorphism in the skink Eumeces laticeps: an example of sexual selection. Canadian Journal of Zoology 63:995-1002.

Cooper, WE, and LJ Vitt. 1985. Blue tails and autotomy: enhancement of predation avoidance in juvenile skinks. Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 70:265-276.

Vitt, LJ, and WE Cooper, Jr. 1986. Tail loss, tail color, and predator escape in Eumeces (Lacertilia: Scincidae): age-specific differences in costs and benefits. Canadian Journal of Zoology 64:584-592.

Cooper, WE, Jr. and LJ Vitt. 1986. Interspecific odour discriminations among syntopic congeners in scincid lizards (genus Eumeces). Behaviour 97:1-9.

Cooper, WE, Jr., and LJ Vitt. 1986. Lizard pheromones: behavioral responses and adaptive significance in skinks of the genus Eumeces. Pp. 323-340 In: D. Duvall, D. Muller- Schwarze, and R. M. Silverstein (eds.), Chemical signals in vertebrates 4. Plenum Publ. Corp.

Cooper, WE, Jr., LJ Vitt, R Hedges, and RB Huey. 1990. Locomotor impairment and defense in gravid lizards (Eumeces laticeps): behavioral shift in activity may offset costs of reproduction in an active forager. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 27:153-157.

Pechmann, JHK, DE Scott, RD Semlitsch, JP Caldwell, LJ Vitt, and JW Gibbons. 1991. Declining amphibian populations: the problem of separating human impacts from natural fluctuations. Science (Wash. D.C.). 253:892-895.

Vitt, LJ. 1992. Mimicry of millipedes and centipedes by elongate terrestrial vertebrates. Research and Exploration 8:76-95.

Vitt, LJ, and JP Caldwell. 1994. Resource utilization and guild structure of small vertebrates in the Amazon forest leaf litter. Journal of Zoology, London 234:463-476.

Vitt, LJ, JP Caldwell, PA Zani, and TA Titus. 1997. The role of habitat shift in the evolution of lizard morphology: evidence from tropical Tropidurus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA) 94:3828-3832.

Irschick, DJ, LJ Vitt, PA Zani, and JB Losos. 1997. A comparison of evolutionary radiations in mainland and West Indian Anolis lizards. Ecology 78:2191-2203.

Huey, RB, ER Pianka, and LJ Vitt. 2001. How often do most lizards ‘run on empty’? Ecology 82:1-7.

Winemiller, KO, ER Pianka, LJ Vitt, and A Joern. 2001. Food web laws or niche theory? Six independent empirical tests. American Naturalist 158:193-199.

Vitt, LJ, ER Pianka, WE Cooper, Jr., and K Schwenk. 2003. History and the global ecology of squamate reptiles. American Naturalist 162:44-60.

Vitt, LJ, JP Caldwell, SS Sartorius, WE Cooper, Jr., TA Baird, TD Baird, and V Pérez-Mellado. 2005. Pushing the edge: extended activity as an alternative to risky body temperatures in an herbivorous teiid lizard (Cnemidophorus murinus: Squamata). Functional Ecology 19:152–158.

Vitt, LJ, and ER Pianka. 2005. Deep history impacts present day ecology and biodiversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA) 22:7877–7881.

Goldberg, SR, CR Bursey and LJ Vitt. 2006. Parasites of two lizard species, Anolis punctatus and Anolis transversalis (Squamata: Polychrotidae) from Brazil and Ecuador. Amphibia-Reptilia 27:575–579.

Avila-Pires, TCS, MS Hoogmoed, and LJ Vitt. 2007. Herpetofauna da Amazônia. pp. 13–43, In Herpetologia no Brasil II, Eds. L. B. Nascimento and M. E. Oliveira.

Mesquita, DO, GR Colli and LJ Vitt. 2007. Ecological release in lizard assemblages in Neotropical savannas. Oecologia 153:185-195.

Costa, GC, C Wolfe, DB Shepard, JP Caldwell, and LJ Vitt. 2008. Detecting the influence of climatic variables on species' distributions: A test using GIS niche-based models along a steep longitudinal environmental gradient. Journal of Biogeography 35:647-656. Gamble, T, AM Simons, GR Colli, and LJ Vitt. 2008. Tertiary climate change and the diversification of the Amazonian gecko genus Gonatodes (Sphaerodactylidae, Squamata). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 46:74–81.

Costa, GC, DO Mesquita, GR Coli, and LJ Vitt. 2008. Niche expansion and the niche variation hypothesis: Does the degree of individual variation increase in depauperate assemblages? American Naturalist 172:868–877. Costa, GC, LJ Vitt, ER Pianka, DO Mesquita, and GR Colli. 2008. Optimal foraging constrains macroecological patterns: Body size and dietary niche breadth in lizards. Global Ecology and Biogeography 17:670–677. Cooper, WE, Jr., JP Caldwell, and LJ Vitt. 2009. Conspicuousness and vestigial escape behaviour by two dendrobatid frogs, Dendrobates auratus and Oophaga pumilio. Behaviour 146:325–349.

Huey, RB, CA Deutsch, JJ Tewksbury, LJ Vitt, PE Hertz, HJ Álvarez Pérez, and T. Garland, Jr. 2009. Why tropical lizards are vulnerable to climate warming. Journal of the Royal Society B, London 276:1939–1948.

Gamble, T, AM Bauer, GR Colli, E Greenbaum, TR Jackman, LJ Vitt, and AM Simons. 2011. Coming to America: multiple origins of New World geckos. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 24:231-244.

Pyron, RA, FT Burbrink, GR Colli, CA Kuczynski, AN Montes de Oca, LJ Vitt, and JJ Wiens. 2011. Integrated phylogenetic inference: Species trees, concatenated data analysis, and systematics of colubroid snakes. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 458:329–342.

D'Angiolella, D, T Gamble, TCS Avila-Pires, GR Colli, BP Noonan, and LJ Vitt. 2011. Anolis chrysolepis revisited: Molecular phylogeny and taxonomy of the Anolis chrysolepis species group Duméril & Bibron, 1837 (Squamata: Polychrotidae). Bulletin of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (Harvard University) 160:35–63. Gamble, T, JD Daza, GR Colli, LJ Vitt, and AM Bauer. 2011. A new genus of miniaturized and pug–nosed gecko from South America (Sphaerodactylidae: Gekkota). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 163:1244–1266.

Bursey, CR, SR Goldberg, and LJ Vitt. 2012. Helminths of Cnemidophorus ruthveni (Squamata: Teiidae) from Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles, with description of a new species of Alaeuris (Nematoda: Pharyngodonidae). Journal of Parasitology 98:795–800.

Mesquita, DO, GR Colli, GC Costa, TB Costa, DB Shepard, LJ Vitt, and ER Pianka. 2015. Life history data of lizards of the world. Ecology 96:594.