Williams - p, 6 
2. West Indies problems 
The discovery by Albert Schwartz of a new primitive montane anole on 
Hispaniola has forced Williams to make a reassessment of his opinions on 
the evolution of the Hispaniolan fauna and its relationship to that of 
Puerto Rico, Williams has previously held that A. occultus on Puerto Rico 
had originated there and represented the ancestral stock for the whole 
carolinensis group (from which the distinctive elements of Hispaniola's 
montane fauna derives). Williams, in fact, believed that the first event 
in the radiation of the eastern Greater Antillean anole fauna was the 
division within Puerto Rico of the ancestral stock into carolinensis and 
bimaculatus groups sensu lato. With Schwartz's discovery of A, sheplani 
in the Sierra de Baoruco of the Dominican Republic - undoubtedly the most 
primitive member of the carolinensis group - this position is no longer 
tenable. Discussion between Etheridge and Williams involving consideration 
of many possible phyletic schemes and colonization sequences has resulted 
in agreement that the most plausible of these has been one in which the 
carolinensis group originated in Hispaniola, 
The modification of Williams' scheme required by this proposes that 
division of the ancestral stock occurred not within but between islands, 
the carolinensis group differentiating from the ancestral stock in 
Hispaniola, the bimaculatus group in Puerto Rico. We then explain the 
richness and distinctiveness of the carolinensis group in Hispaniola by 
its earlier start and hence greater opportunity for radiation there, and 
the absence of such richness and distinctiveness for the carolinensis group 
on Puerto Rico (with only the one representative, A. occultus) by the 
earlier start and greater opportunity for radiation of the bimaculatus 
group (sensu lato) on that island, 
For Williams, the peculiar division of the anole fauna of Hispaniola 
into phyletically distinctive montane and lowland faunas has been a central 
problem, In Puerto Rico wet montane and dry lowland faunas are present, 
but except that A. occultus has no lowland representative, the two faunas 
are very closely related, each montane species has a lowland closest relative. 
Williams has explained the montane carolinensis group endemics of 
Hispaniola as true autochthons, while regarding such elements of the lowland 
fauna as the cybotes and distichus species groups as latecomers from Puerto 
Rico, 
This postulated history has been opposed because all of the cybotes 
group on Hispaniola are karyotypically more primitive than their Puerto 
Rican relatives, the cristatellus group (see Gorman above). Similarly, the 
distichus group on Hispaniola is karyotypically less derived than A. 
stratulus which appears to represent them on Puerto Rico. 
But there is much that opposes the conception that the primitive member 
of any lineage will be found at its place of origin. On the contrary, there 
is much that suggests that lineages that still survive at and near their 
