Super Dwarf

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Originally Posted by alexrls

i skimmed thru the site and while it is very impressive and informative, it didnt really answer my question.:(

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From his site:
Super dwarfs were originally imported by Bob Clark and Mike Wilbanks from an undisclosed island in the Greater Sundas (possibly near kayuadi), where for some evolutionary reason they become sexually mature at around 5 feet. With no locale to name them after, Superdwarf seemed an appropriate name.

They are not super small by any means, I believe this just became their common name after they maxed their growth out smaller then regular retics.
Rusty

thanks for clearin' that up.

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Originally Posted by Rusty_Reptiles

From his site:

Super dwarfs were originally imported by Bob Clark and Mike Wilbanks from an undisclosed island in the Greater Sundas (possibly near kayuadi), where for some evolutionary reason they become sexually mature at around 5 feet.

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This is a common occurence on islands.

Larger species tend to become smaller than their parent species on islands because of food supply stress.

Interestingly, smaller species tend to become larger on islands so that they can compete for food/resources with larger animals.

See the following link to learn more about "the island rule".

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/eden/giants.html

A good example is birds on Galopogos. Small and Large specimens of the same species of birds tend to be successful while medium sized birds are unsuccessful. In their case it's because seed comes in 2 sizes: Big and Small. The big birds eat the big seed with no problem. The Small birds eat the small seed with no problem. The medium birds are not large enough to eat the large seed, but are too big to have an appropriate ratio of energy expenditure in food searching: to energy gained from small seed.

I said "for some evolutionary reason" for simplicity, not because I didn't have a good idea. But thanks, that was a good link.

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Originally Posted by snakeman55

A good example is birds on Galopogos. Small and Large specimens of the same species of birds tend to be successful while medium sized birds are unsuccessful. In their case it's because seed comes in 2 sizes: Big and Small. The big birds eat the big seed with no problem. The Small birds eat the small seed with no problem. The medium birds are not large enough to eat the large seed, but are too big to have an appropriate ratio of energy expenditure in food searching: to energy gained from small seed.

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Not really an example of the same evolutionary trend/mechanism I was talking about.......

The finch example is an example of what's called sympatric speciation through character displacement (or simply charater displacement).

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Originally Posted by snakeman55

I said "for some evolutionary reason" for simplicity, not because I didn't have a good idea. But thanks, that was a good link.

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No problem dude....I was just trying to add to the discussion.

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Originally Posted by JLC

Beautiful!!

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That's exactly what my response was I was in the military so I gotta use this smily .....:salute: