Must be some fundamental limit on the size of organs and tissues, to still function. Or, there are smaller reptiles and we just haven't 'seen' them yet! Who's looking behind every blade of grass for an iguana after all.
Insects win the 'smallest' title - the Fairy Wasp is 0.13mm
I was wondering the same thing. But as pointed out here[1]. There are some interesting points:
Cell size is actually affected to genome size and cell size has a more complex relation to Physical Shapes and sizes:
" As a result, species that are the same physical
size but have different genome and cell sizes likely also differ in ways that significantly affect morphogenesis, growth, and adult morphology. Analysis of organismal size and size change thus becomes a consideration not simply of physical size, but also of a more elusive concept-biological size."
Even within a species the variation is tremendous:
"In some groups, miniaturization may have been achieved by cell size decrease (65). In others, extensive genome and cell size variation complicates tremendously even basic comparisons of body size among taxa."
I remember seeing attenborough on TV how a species of frogs living in the cold areas just allow themselves to be frozen for long periods of time and then thaw back to life!
Maybe the limit is not function, but being competitive. Insects don’t have lungs and an open instead of closed circulatory system, with a tubular “heart” sloshing around hemolymph instead of blood. At this small size this should have advantages?
Plenty of reptiles hatch from an egg smaller than this and can fend for themselves. The only thing special is that the growth of these and other miniature chameleons ends at an abnormally small size.
It occurs to me, that the eggs of this reptile are by necessity much smaller than the adult. Thus, the young are likely born somewhat smaller than the given record-breaking size.
This comes up from time to time, but it's pertinent to the discussion (more so on larger scales, but the reverse holds true], so in case you haven't had the delight of reading [1].
B. nana, brought to us by the guy who named some pygmy frogs 'Mini scule', 'Mini ature' and 'Mini mum'. I'm looking forward to the next few things they're working on going public :)
Whenever I see the word minuscule, I’m reminded of a time in my childhood when my brother’s teacher spelled it wrong on a spelling test (that week was to have a collection of words starting mini-, though looking now it seems that miniscule is such a common variant that it is often accepted)
Was it discovered, meaning that the indigenous population didn't know about it, doesn't have a name for it, cannot tell you anything about it, or meaning that it will now be introduced in a formal taxonomy?
There are several similar small chameleons around the island, which have been long known by locals and tourists. But this new one is 'micro-endemic' to a very small, remote region. Probably been seen before, but I think 'discovered' is fair in this case when talking about discovering that this is a separate, undescribed species and not one of the more widespread ones.
A second issue is that, at lower levels, taxonomy isn’t a very well defined thing. (Perhaps one way to think of it is that phylogeny maps onto taxonomy and this mapping isn’t injective.) So if two groups of animals are reclassified as two species, it is hard to say whether or not a new species was discovered. Especially if the two variants were known before—should one backdate the species discovery to the time the variants were identified? Similarly, a species doesn’t really go extinct if the taxonomy changes so two species are merged into one.
The vernacular names for some group of animals (or plants) needn’t correspond to some clade that gets a taxonomical name. Eg broccoli and cabbage are considered the same species, whereas ‘crab’ may refer to all sorts of largely unrelated animals.
> The vernacular names for some group of animals (or plants) needn’t correspond to some clade that gets a taxonomical name. Eg broccoli and cabbage are considered the same species, whereas ‘crab’ may refer to all sorts of largely unrelated animals.
Broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. botrytis) and cabbage (var. costata/italica) are bad examples [1], since subspecies and varieties are well defined as ranks in botanical taxonomy and there are regulatory structures based on them. I think a better example would be hybrids like plumcots which are crosses of multiple species. Fitting them cleanly into natural taxonomy is a huge mess - over evolutionary timescales hybrids usually outcompete, converge with, or diverge from their parents enough to clean up their taxa for us.
Interesting discussion about “smallest” depend on how size is measured:
“ As a result, whether or not the new species is considered the smallest amniote in the world depends on whether we define that based on the male or female body size, or the midpoint of the two. It turns out this is quite a common problem in other species with size dimorphism as well, such as frogs.”
Did no one else notice the gem in here that BBC failed to mention, that this lizard has one of if not the largest dicks relative to body size of any vertebrate? Due to gender size dysmorphism and internal fertilization.
I think of a broad category of items including strawberry seeds, mustard seeds, sunflower seeds, mango seeds and other "pit"s, up to coconut seeds. I think "sunflower seed" would have been a better comparison, as its something a person can actually visualize, not a 3 order of magnitude spanning category.
If you leave out massive outliers like coconuts (which I highly suspect are not what 99.9% of people think of when they think of "seeds"—I realize that's not the case for you), I think the variation would actually be quite similar.
The article provides a length of 13.5mm which is only 10mm shorter than the distance between the seed comparison and the reported length of the species.
> 10mm shorter than the distance between the seed comparison
This doesn't parse for me. You mean the difference between the two lengths of seeds I gave? Thats 150mm - 3mm, which is more than 10mm longer than 13.5mm.
I was going to make the exact same comparison with the mustard seed and coconut, but looking at the numbers, it more or less tracks as being the center of the log scale between the two seeds. Palm seeds in general are exceptionally large compared to anything else, while we're at it.
I came here to say the exact same thing. Who even goes around comparing things to seeds anyway? The writer was trying to be cute but just ended up saying something bizarre and stupid.
I'm guessing it probably needs a very specific diet and climate to survive. If this is like other chameleons, they are prone to all sorts of health issues and in general very hard to keep alive.
Nonsense, a shrewd capitalist can easily sell these in kits with everything you need to keep them alive. They are so small, and if they die well they are tiny you can probably just get a new one and most people will probably keep like 4 or 5 of them at a time anyway, probably breeding their own replacements. These are fantastic can’t wait to have a terrarium filled with them.
Except for the part where the article mentions these little critters might be facing possible extinction already if it weren’t for protection laws for its native biodome.
Be a lot cooler if we didn’t hasten that just to put them in little glass boxes in our domiciles, forced breeding of domesticated canine and felines have already enough caused genetic problems with breathing and bone density among certain breeds-for example.
Let’s let these little fellas thrive unmolested, does anyone know where I (as a westerner) could learn more about the conservation efforts mentioned in the article?
In the aquarium hobby there is a niche of experienced fishkeepers who keep and breed species of fish that are endangered in nature through the CARES program[1]. (Note 'experienced', these are not the same people who walk into PetSmart on a whim and come out with six goldfish and a bowl.) With careful breeding and mixing of bloodlines, genetic inbreeding issues can largely be avoided.
That said, any species will thrive better in its natural habitat if that habitat can be protected. Continuation of the species in captivity, if it is even possible, should be seen as a last resort and not an equal substitute.
The quotes clue us in, its a title. The title is won again each time a smaller reptile is discovered. That was my immediate understanding on seeing the article. No extra words needed!
Insects win the 'smallest' title - the Fairy Wasp is 0.13mm