Anolis chloris. Photo by Luke Mahler
A recent post extolled the size of the dewlap of the Hispaniolan A. christophei, but a number of readers, myself included, suggested that to find a truly humongous dewlap, you need to go to the mainland. And all one needs to do is look at the wondrous A. chloris pictured above to see that that is true. I challenge any Anole Annals reader to show me a photo of a Caribbean anole strutting his stuff so gynormously.
Still don’t believe me? Here are a few more.
Left to right, top row: unidentified Central American anole (ID, anyone?) from http://rhamphotheca.tumblr.com/post/1322893581/male-anolis-lizard-displaying-dewlap; A. polylepis from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anolis_polylepis,_Costa_Rica.JPG Steven J. Johnson; bottom row: A. gemmosus from James Christensen's spectacular flicker site, http://www.flickr.com/people/primevalnature/; unidentified anole from http://www.morley-read.com/frogs_on_line/telimbela/lizards/source/dscn8660.html; and A. frenatus also from Christensen's flickr site.
As far as I’m aware, no one has conducted a quantitative study to compare dewlap sizes among mainland and Caribbean anoles. Sounds like a good project for someone!
More importantly, though, why do the largest dewlaps occur on the mainland? Perhaps it has something to do with the relatively low population densities and low rates of display of mainland anoles? Another project waiting to be conducted.
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Rosario Castañeda
I think you have the photos mislabeled! the third species is A. frenatus and the last one is A. gemmosus.
Jonathan Losos
Thanks! Corrected.
Martha Munoz
It’s interesting that you put a picture of a dewlapping A. chloris. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s closely related to A. gorgonae, which is very similar save for being a pure blue in body color rather than green. I didn’t know that their dewlaps were identical, too, though. My impression is that the gorgonae dewlap is relatively smaller. This is based on very few photos that I’ve seen, so I could be off-base, but the chloris dewlap just seems much bigger to me. Anolis gorgonae is found off the mainland coast on (surprise!) Gorgona island. Could dewlaps get smaller when anoles move to islands? Or is the A. gorgonae dewlap just as big?
Luke Mahler
Anolis gorgonae’s dewlap is just as big. I don’t have any pictures of gorgonae displaying, but I’ve measured dewlap size for both species – they’re both huge.
Wes Chun
It looks like there are TWO photos of Dactyloa gemmosa (back me up, Rosario!) in different color phases: the one in the lower left AND the one in the middle, with the green dewlap. Also, I seem to remember meeting Morley Read several years ago in Luis Coloma’s lab at Catolica University. (Is this true, Fernando? Are you out there?)