As an evolutionary biomechanist that is half in the Losos lab, I naturally dabbled in studying anoles during my first semester. I never presented my research, and have since moved on to other animals, but I thought you might like to see what I found.
Thom’s work on head shape shows a great amount of variation in the jaw length and width among anoles, and we wondered if the shape had an effect on jaw function. I was looking for differences in feeding behavior between the short-snouted Anolis sagrei and the pointy-snouted Anolis carolinensis. I placed a cricket on a leash, put it on a wooden perch inside a plexiglas container, put the lizard on the perch at the other end, and filmed the result.
Here are some videos of one sagrei attack:
sagrei- Front view
And here is a video of a carolinensis:
carolinensis- Side view
Based on my limited dataset, it looks like the sagrei keep their heads low on the perch while they make an attack-dash consisting of 1 chomp. They hold the prey in their mouths for a while before they begin chewing. Carolinensis get very close to the prey, pause, raise their heads up, and stab their jaws downwards without moving their hind legs.
By the way, if you need ideas on how to study anole biomechanics, I’d love to chat!
- Species-Specific Feeding Behaviors! - December 29, 2011
Martha Munoz
I wonder if it’s not so much species-specific than ecomorph-specific. Might be another layer of convergence!