I’m currently reading a 274 page tome called “The Biology and Biodemography of Anolis carolinensis” by Robert E. Gordon. Dating back to 1956, this impressive piece of scholarship is Gordon’s Ph.D. thesis. Gordon collected the bulk of his data in biweekly nocturnal surveys of the demography and spatial ecology of two populations of green anoles. The surveys continued for over a year, and consequently, this document is filled with insights into these lizards’ ecology.
One sentence that caught my attention was this, from page 195:
Anolis activity is primarily diurnal, although movement and feeding were observed at night under conditions of bright moonlight.
We’ve had observations of anoles feeding at artificial lights before, but have any of you night-owl herpers observed something similar under natural light?
A figure from Gordon (1956). Can we please bring back this elegant asymmetric bar graph plotting style?
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Skip Lazell
No! I have grown up and grown old with A. carolinensis, regularly note them feeding at artificial lights, regularly hunted frogs and salamanders at night in nearby woods, found lots of sleeping anoles there, and NEVER seen an anole active in mere moonlight.
Skip
Reptiles
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time hunting anoles in Florida and it’s infinitely easier to collect them at night since they sleep, often out in the open. It’s about 100x easier than catching them in the daylight 🙂
JL Sick
I have seen them feed near my security cameras in little to no light and have to guess they’re using the IR (motion sensor) lights. I can’t prove they can see in the IR wave length but they are feeding in (human) total darkness.