I received a copy of Steven Poe’s “guide” to the mainland anoles. The book includes summaries of 240 species, copious photographs, range maps, and chapters on anole biology and identifying and catching anoles. The 400+ page tome is not entirely devoid of value. Many of the photos are excellent, the maps are useful, and the book’s thickness encourages functionality as a step stool (although its heft precludes frequent usage in this capacity). Unfortunately, the self-satisfied prose of the author fails to distract sufficiently from the book’s considerable inadequacies, an exhaustive list of which might exceed the length of Poe’s long-winded exposition itself. Settling on the most salient among the myriad deficiencies in Poe’s treatment is a challenge akin to finding a live Anolis roosevelti during daytime while jacked on Bufotenin (Figure 1). Herewith I make my attempt.

First of all, who made Poe judge and jury of Anolis taxonomy? Just because Anolis osa has no diagnostic characters save for continuously varying hemipenial traits, freely interbreeds with A. polylepis, appears externally identical to A. polylepis, is mitochondrially nonmonophyletic relative to A. polylepis, and is found syntopically with A. polylepis, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recognize A. osa as valid. Even though A. ibague, described from external characters, looks exactly like A. sulcifrons doesn’t mean it might not be an Ibague-area endemic. And no, Poe’s addition of an appendix with detailed point-by-point refutation of each of the species names he fails to recognize does not absolve such cavalier taxonomic behavior. Somebody must do the work before we make such rash decisions! Somebody needs to examine Type specimens!

         Second, do we really need the tone of a wannabe cross between Bill Simmons and Hunter S. Thompson in the text of a field guide? Seriously: A reference to Land of the Lost? (P. 367; does anyone under age 70 know what this is?); telling us Linnaeus was “cool” with herps? (P. 367); describing one’s difficulty to identify a specimen as being “screwed”? (P. 37); mocking E. O. Wilson’s ineptitude in identifying anoles? (P. 369; OK, upon rereading maybe Wilson deserved that). Author Poe, drop the cheekiness and just tell us how to identify the anoles, please. Realize, dear Poe: not everybody enjoys your writing as much as you do.

Third, what’s with the imperialist gall of offering a guide to all mainland anoles (Figure 2) ? Señor Poe, have you traveled to all of the neotropics and seen all the pertinent anoles in life? Have you caught mirus, proboscis, fungosus, lamari, brooksi, alvarezdeltoroi? Have you visited Adrian Nieto’s anole collection in Mexico or James Aparicio’s in La Paz? I’ll trust Ayala-Varela in Ecuador; Velasco and Moreno-Arias and Daza and Calderon and Castro-Herrera in Colombia; Rivas and Barros in Venezuela; Chaves and Köhler (R.I.P.) in Costa Rica; Ibañez in Panama; Yañez-Miranda and Venegas in Peru; Rodrigues and Prates in Brazil; Nieto Montes de Oca in Mexico; thank you. Newsflash to Poe: We. Don’t. Need. You. Go back to your adobe tower at UNM, drop the toploftical anole schtick, and stick to phylogenetic computer games and data cooption. You want another anole named after you? How about Anolis whiteprivilegei?

And finally, ahem, the photos and the maps? Oh, you know, those subtly credited triflings that constitute essentially ALL THAT IS OF VALUE IN THE BOOK? How about making Tom Kennedy, Chris Anderson, and Joseph Barnett coauthors? Do you think you could have produced this book without Torres-Carvajal’s PUCE website? Without the maps by Barnett? Without iNaturalist anole leader Kennedy’s photos? Without Savage (2002), McCranie and Kohler (2015), Arteaga et al. (2023), Moreno-Arias et al. (2021), Castro-Herrera and Ayala (unpublished Saurios de Colombia), and Ernest Williams’ unpublished notes? It is one thing to produce an arrogantly broad taxonomic treatise. But to do so as the sole author? Child, please. Ernest Williams could have written this book, except good. You, Senhor Poe, are no Ernest Williams.

I could go on and on and on and on and on describing the countless and multifaceted defects in Poe’s treatment, but the time commitment required for even a tally of such failings strains the credible limits of scientific service. The retraction of this book in its entirety from Princeton University Press is warranted and should be advocated on grounds that the book fails to reach even the most base standards of scholarship. The thing reads like a children’s joke book that is not funny even to children.

However. If you can tolerate the author’s smug tone, his authoritarian taxonomic tendencies, his bumptious claim to be an expert on all mainland anoles, and his anti-conservationist approach to conservation; if you are comfortable with pop-culture references in a field guide, an overwritten chapter that presents guidelines for finding and catching anoles in nauseating detail, and natural history accounts that focus on sleeping behavior (of all things); if you can stomach footnotes upon footnotes that offer little beyond exemplary demonstration of the author’s singular talent for herpetological inanity; well, you might find some serviceableness in Poe’s treatment of mainland anoles.

But I doubt it.

Pete Snove

Adjunct Assistant Administrative Faculty, Eastern New Mexico State Seminary College of the Southwest, Clovis Satellite Branch at Yerba, New Mexico, USA.

Photo by Gary Owen Dick.

Reader Gary Owen Dick (see also this post on a yellow anole he found) writes from near Dallas: Took some pics the other day of a female green anole shedding.  What intrigues me is the blue coloration on the inner side of the backlit pieces of the loose stratum corneum seen at these angles.  Is this a structural thing, or a camera illusion?

Male green anole (Anolis carolinensis) positioned in front of a black-jack flower (Bidens pilosa)

Species invasions are usually studied one at a time, but ecosystems rarely have that luxury. This project began with a simple frustration: while reading about invasive predators, invasive competitors, and pollinator declines, I kept noticing that these processes were usually treated separately—even though accelerating global trade is increasingly causing ecosystems to experience multiple invasions simultaneously. This is especially true on islands, which are highly connected through the constant movement of goods and supplies. Species rarely arrive alone. That raised a bigger question for me: what happens when multiple invaders arrive together and begin reshaping ecological networks at the same time? Do their effects simply add up, or can they fundamentally reorganize pollination systems in ways we have been overlooking?

The Ogasawara Islands are one of those places that make you feel you are exactly where you should be. Their natural beauty is breathtaking, and the local people live in remarkable harmony with the island. You instantly want to become part of that network of connections among species, to blend into it and stay.

Yet what stayed with me most was not what I saw—it was what I did not see.

Walking through the forest, you begin to notice what is missing, and what has been added. At first, everything appears intact. Then, gradually, the details emerge. Honey bees buzz among non-native flowers. Introduced green anoles wait patiently on blossoms for unsuspecting prey. And slowly you realize that something else should be there. The native bees that once pollinated these forests have disappeared from two of the islands. Younger generations may never have the chance to encounter them. What remains is an ecological network that still functions, but not in the same way as before.

That realization became the emotional starting point for this study. The urgency to respond to pollinator declines led many people to point directly at the green anole as the culprit, triggering eradication efforts before any quantitative, community-level assessment had been carried out.

Perhaps it is simply because I am a community ecologist and tend to view ecosystems as interconnected wholes, but I kept asking myself: could the impact really be driven by a single species? That is when co-invasion became the central question. If we wanted to understand changes in the pollination network, it was impossible to focus only on the predator of pollinators. We also needed to consider competitors such as the honey bee and the role of non-native flowering plants. To investigate this, we conducted three field campaigns in 2021, sampling pollination networks through direct observations with binoculars across four islands. Two islands had already been invaded and had lost their native bees, while two remained uninvaded and still supported native bee populations. We also surveyed the other invasive species that could potentially alter pollination networks, such as plant and pollinators competitors, and their associated ecological interactions.

Even after collecting the data, one of the biggest challenges was resisting the temptation to simplify invasions into isolated events. Modelling simultaneous invasions quickly became complicated because predator introductions, competitive interactions, and pollination rewiring can all interact in unexpected ways. Yet this complexity turned out to be one of the most fascinating aspects of the study. We found that the role of honey bees changed depending on the status of native pollinators on each island. In places where native bees had disappeared, honey bees often became the primary pollinators of many plant species. At the same time, their preference for non-native plants suggests that these invaders may facilitate each other’s spread and establishment. One of the most surprising findings was how consistently top-down effects cascaded through trophic networks. The green anole’s impact did not stop with pollinators; it ultimately reached plants by altering pollinator communities and their interactions, effectively crossing trophic levels and influencing plant reproduction. However, the final impacts were a complex combination that depends on all species involved.

What this project ultimately taught me is that invasions are not just about which species arrive, but about how multiple newcomers interact with one another once they do. Co-invasions can affect ecological communities far beyond what single-species approaches predict, particularly on islands where ecological balances are already fragile. That realization makes prevention feel even more urgent: by the time eradication becomes politically or ethically feasible, much of the ecological rewiring may already be underway. For me, this work reinforced the idea that biosecurity is not simply about stopping invaders and protecting threatened species—it is about preserving the invisible interactions that hold biodiversity together.

Quitián, M., Planas‐Sitjà, I., Morooka, M., Traveset, A., Tierney, S.M. and Cronin, A.L., 2026. Coinvasional disruptions to island pollinator networks. Conservation Biology, p.e70304.

Whit Gibbons

From the pages of  Tuscaloosa News:

You’ve likely seen this common lizard. Why it changes color | ECOVIEWS

One of the most commonly seen lizards in the Southern states is the green anole, also known as the North American green anole or Carolina anole. (Its scientific name is Anolis carolinensis.) Although more than 400 species of anoles are known to science, the green anole is the only one native to the United States. Most people appreciate seeing them in their yards.

Q. A type of lizard we have in Birmingham, Alabama, is sometimes green and sometimes brown. I know it is not two different lizards because I have watched one change from brown to green. Are these a type of chameleon that can change skin color to match their surroundings?

A. No. Anoles are in a different family of lizards from Old World chameleons. Those are the ones famous for being able to change skin color based on the background, thus creating a true camouflage. In green anoles color change is a response to external factors, such as temperature and humidity. It may also be influenced by hormonal changes.

Whether lizards experience emotions comparable to humans remains a mystery. Researchers continue to investigate why anoles change color, as well as what purpose that change serves for the individual lizard. Most anoles found hidden under bark or leaves on cool days will be brown. If you pick up a brown one and hold it, it will usually turn green.

To learn more, I contacted Tom Jenssen, an expert on the subject of color-changing behavior in green anoles.

During his career as a professor at Virginia Tech, Tom observed thousands of green anoles while conducting research on the species. His observations confirmed categorically that the color of a green anole has nothing to do with what the lizard is standing on. One on a green leaf can be brown; one on dark soil can be green.

He indicated that factors causing a green anole to exhibit the brown color phase are not completely understood but he explained the biological mechanism.

“Color-shifting comes from melanophore activity over a subdermal layer whose structure reflects green wave lengths.” In other words, the concentration of black or brown pigment cells determines the color exhibited. If the pigment cells are large, they obscure a lower level in the skin that reflects green light. When the cells are concentrated, the lizard looks dark brown, mottled brown or even like a bad bruise of blotchy brown and olive-green. If the pigment cells contract in size, the lower level is exposed, and the lizard appears green.

He further noted that the activity of pigment cells and their concentration are controlled by the endocrine system, the glands that affect hormones and mood changes for many animals. The remaining biological mystery: What triggers the endocrine system to cause the pigment cells to contract or expand? Body color in anoles is highly complex, with no simple answer for why an individual is a particular color at any given time.

Social interactions with other lizards may be responsible in some cases. Brown coloration could possibly result in faster warming of the body on a cool sunny day.

Q. Why do these lizards that can change from brown to green sometimes have a bright red throat?

A. Male green anoles use the vivid red throat fan, or dewlap, to challenge other male anoles and sometimes even other animals. The dewlap display is often accompanied by push-ups and head-bobbing. An invasive species from Cuba, the brown anole, now found in Florida, Georgia and Alabama, has an orange dewlap.

Next time you see a green anole displaying a red throat, take a moment to watch its performance. Who is its audience? Is it another anole in the vicinity — or is it you?

Native green anoles are completely harmless and offer fun outdoor entertainment. Enjoy watching them stalk bugs and interact with each other. They are indicative of a healthy environment and deserve our appreciation wherever we find them.

Whit Gibbons is professor of zoology and senior biologist at the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. If you have an environmental question or comment, email ecoviews@gmail.com.