The Dating World of Anoles (WARNING: Contains Mature Content!)

In the summer of 2010, one of the Glor Lab field teams gathered video of Anolis distichus displays as part of a project to quantify display diversity across the Dominican Republic.  A video of a fight from this expedition was posted on Anole Annals and some great color changes from the same trip were posted on the Glor Lab’s blog a few months back.  Another exciting action that was caught on video a few times throughout the trip was a little bit of the hanky panky.  Generally, the male performed a set of pushups after which he chased and contacted the female.  The two then performed some pushups together, followed by a few minutes of copulation in a leg-wrap.  Copulation was followed by more pushups from the male.  The video above shows an example of this typical sequence of events.  Viewer discretion is advised.

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3 Comments

  1. Nice work on the video. Let’s see if anyone can guess the subspecies.

  2. Excellent video. One question.

    What happened to the coloration of the male during the five-minute break? Does that commonly go along with mating?

    • Audrey Kelly

      Anolis distichus actually changes color pretty frequently out in the field and not just while mating (you can see some other color change videos on the Glor Lab blog). I don’t think we have enough footage of mating to say whether there is a correlation between mating and the color changes. But if we get any more information as we go through the rest of the footage, I’ll be sure to mention it on Anole Annals!

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