Papers in Herpetology and Evolutionary Biology

by

William P. Hall, III

PhD, Harvard University, 1973

The following papers relate to research on evolution, cytogenetics and speciation that William Hall carried out at Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville, Harvard University and at the University of Melbourne (Australia) during the late 1960's and 1970's. After Dr Hall's graduation from Harvard, due to paradigmatic misunderstandings with reviewers of his draft papers and his inability to find a secure academic appointment that provided a practical situation for continuing his research program, some core material was either published obscurely or not at all. However, the body of this work is still relevant today and Hall introduces some interesting theoretical ideas in these works that have still not been adequately tested. Questions that might be asked are do the agamid and chameleontid radiations in Africa show similar patterns of speciation and chromosome variation to those observed in the iguanid and sceloporine lizards in North America? We are happy to make this work available to the public via the Web.

Dr Hall has scanned and converted the key papers to HTML, allowing the body of knowledge to be explored as a hypertext. Hotlinks below provide direct access to the respective papers.

For biographical notes on William Hall and his recent work in knowledge management, organizational theory and organizational evolution, see his personal web page: Evolutionary Biology of Species and Organizations. For those interested on the current state of research relating to sceloporine lizards, Jack Sites and his students and colleagues at Brigham Young University were able to extend the study of the genetic and chromosomal variation in the sceloporines well beyond where William Hall had to abandon the research. However, many questions remain unanswered as indicated in his recent paper, Delimiting species: a Renaissance issue in systematic biology, TRENDS in Ecology and Evolution Vol.18 No.9, p. 462 September 2003.

  1. Hall, W.P. 1965. Preliminary chromosome studies of some Nevada Test Site lizards. Paper given at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, Lawrence, Kansas.

  2. Hall, W.P. [1966]. Is the plastid an endosymbiont. 26 pp. [The manuscript was first submitted in Hampton L. Carson's Genetics and Evolution course at Washington University, St. Louis., May 3, 1966. It was revised Summer, 1966, in hopes of finding a sponsor for its publication. It was shown at the cell biology meetings in Ames, Iowa, with no result, and has not been updated since. The 1966 MS has now been converted to HTML for publication on the Web. The paper is historically important because one of the first anywhere to present comprehensive evidence in support of the theory that the cellular structure of single-celled algae arose from a symbiotic association between a non-photosynthetic protozoan and blue-green algae - a thesis that is now accepted by most biologists but was highly revolutionary when it was first made famous by Lynn Margulis in her 1968 article in Science (161:1020-2) and her 1970 book, Origin of Eukaryotic Cells, Yale Univ. Press.

  3. Hall, W.P. 1969a. Triploidy and parthenogenesis in the agamid lizard Leiolepis belliana Gray. Abstr. 49th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, p. 13.

  4. Hall, W.P.. 1969b. Sibling species of Sceloporus from the southern end of Baja California. Paper given at the Annual Meeting of the Herpetologists League, Boston, Mass.

  5. Hall, W.P.. 1970. Three probable cases of parthenogenesis in lizards (Agamidae, Chamaeleontidae, Gekkonidae). Experentia 26: 1271-1273. 

  6. Hall, W.P. 1971. Karyotype evolution in the Sceloporus grammicus species complex (Sauria, Iguanidae). Mammal. Chromosome Newsl. no. 13, p. 74.

  7. Hall, W.P. 1972a. Chromosome evolution of the iguanid genus Sceloporus. Herpetol. Rev. 3: 106.

  8. Hall, W.P. 1972b. Comparative population cytogenetics and the evolution of Sceloporus, Washington D.C. meeting of the Herpetologists' League, December, 1972.

  9. Webster, T.P., W.P. Hall, and E.E. Williams. 1972. Fission in the evolution of a lizard karyotype. Science 177: 6111-613.

  10. Hall, W.P. and R.K. Selander. 1973. Hybridization of karyotypically differentiated populations in the Sceloporus grammicus complex (Iguanidae). Evolution 27: 226-242. 

  11. Hall, W.P. 1973. Comparative population cytogenetics, speciation and evolution of the iguanid lizard genus Sceloporus. PhD Thesis, Harvard University.

  12. Hall, W.P. and A. Espinoza-N. 1974. Karyotypes and karyotypic variation in Jamaican anoles. 2 pp. (in) E.E. Williams (ed.), The Second Anolis Newsletter, Mus. Comp. Zool., Harvard Univ., Cambridge, Mass.

  13. Smith, H.M. and W.P. Hall. 1974. Contributions to the concepts of reproductive cycles and the systematics of the scalaris group of the lizard genus Sceloporus. Great Basin Naturalist 34: 97-104.

  14. Dasmann, M. and H.M. Smith. 1974. A new sceloporine lizard from Oaxaca, Mexico. Great Basin Naturalist 34: 231-273. [S. pictus lumped with S. megalepidurus based on my collections of intergrades. S. m. halli named after me]

  15. Paull, D., E.E. Williams and W.P. Hall. 1976. Lizard karyotypes from the Galapagos Islands: Chromosomes in phylogeny and evolution. Breviora Mus. Comp. Zool., Harvard, no. 441, 31p. [I wrote the paper and most of it was based on my work, Paull was listed as first author for political reasons.]

  16. Smith, H.M. and T. Alvarez. 1976. Possible intraspecific sympatry in the lizard species Sceloporus torquatus, and its relationship with S. cyanogenys. Trans. Kansas Acad. Sci. 77: 219-224. [S. t. mikeprestoni, n. ssp., based on a specimen from my karyology sent to Smith as an undescribed species.]

  17. Hall, W.P. [1977]. Cascading chromosomal speciation and the paradoxical role of contact hybridization as a barrier to gene flow. Submitted 1977 to Evol. Biology and withdrawn. Submitted in 1979 to Evolutionary Biology and accepted for publication with minor changes, but not completed. Widely circulated in its unpublished form, 91 pp. [Note: Reviewers consistently failed to understand the logic I used to develop arguments in this paper, which in turn lead to my research into the epistemology of the comparative method in evolutionary biology, published in Hall, 1979 and Hall, 1983.] 

  18. Hall, W.P. 1978. Hybrid sinks: The paradoxical role of narrow hybrid zones as barriers to gene flow in animals of limited vagility. Abstr., 25th Ann. Meeting, Genetics Society of Australia, Canberra.

  19. Szymura, J.M., J.B. Mitton and W.P. Hall. 1978. Population genetic analysis of a narrow hybrid zone between the discoglossid anurans Bombina bombina and B. variegata in Poland. [Poster] Abstr. 25th Ann. Meeting, Genetics Society of Australia, Canberra.

  20. Hall, W.P. 1978. Chromosomal variation and modes of speciation in Iguanid lizards. Abstr. 1978 Ann. Meeting, Australian Society of Herpetologists, Mintaro, S.A.

  21. Gross, L and W.P. Hall. 1978. Cytosystematics of Australian skinks: A preliminary report. Abstr. 1978 Ann. Meeting, Australian Society of Herpetologists, Mintaro, S.A.

  22. Hall, W.P. 1978 . Hybrid sinks: a simple minded model to account for the seemingly paradoxical role of parapatric hybrid zones as barriers to gene flow in the process of speciation, with some comments on the inutility of the biological species concept based on reproductive isolation. Symposium: A day for talking about hybrid zones. August 30, 1978. Flinders University School of Biological Sciences.

  23. Hall, W.P. and H.M. Smith. 1979. Lizards of the Sceloporus orcutti complex of the Cape Region of Baja California. Brevioria Mus. Comp. Zool., Harvard, No. 452, 26 p. 

  24. Hall, W.P. [1979] . An Evolutionist in an Epistemological Wonderland: Preface (1979) to Cascades and Sinks. [Accepted for publication in Evolutionary Theory with minor revisions, but not published.  Note: this paper describes the initial difficulties with my 1977 Hybrid Sinks paper, their basis in epistemology and the history of science, and formed the more complete basis for my 1983 paper in the E.E. Williams Festschrift volume.]

  25. Szymura, J.M, J.B. Mitton and W.P. Hall . [1979]. Population Genetic Analysis of a Narrow Hybrid Zone Between Bombina bombina L. and B. variegata L. (Anura; Discoglossidae) In Poland. 85p.  [Abstract - nearly complete MS not authorised for Web publication by the paper's coauthors: HTML version of MS available on request - Request must specify reasons wanted.]

  26. Hall, W.P. 1980. Chromosomes, speciation, and evolution of Mexican iguanid lizards. National Geographic Society Research Reports, 12: 309-329.

  27. Hall, W.P. 1983. Modes of speciation and evolution in the sceloporine iguanid lizards. I. Epistemology of the comparative approach and introduction to the problem. (in) A.G.J. Rhodin and K. Miyata, eds. Advances in Herpetology and Evolutionary Biology - Essays in Honor of Ernest E Williams. Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge Mass. pp.643-679.