This weekend I recently saw an adult male Cuban brown anole (Anolis sagrei) perching higher than I have ever observed – roughly 4m high!
Adult male Cuban brown anole (Anolis sagrei) perching uncharacteristically high
So anole aficionados, what dizzying heights have you observed trunk-ground anoles up to?
*My apologies for the poor quality of the zoomed in sections.
I am most interested in understanding how different species of lizards live together. Specifically, I research the ecological mechanisms that facilitate coexistence and the subsequent evolutionary consequences. I am a post-doc in the Losos Lab at Washington University in St. Louis. Website: www.jamesTstroud.com
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John Vanek
This isn’t related to perch site, but today on the facebook group “In Situ Field Herping Photography,” a picture of a sagrei carrying an unknown egg in it’s mouth was posted. You need to request membership to the group, but if you are interested, here is the link to the photo: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201601164775250&set=gm.506544112798467&type=1
Martha Muñoz
Was this perchance either really early or really late in the day? I’ve found cybotoids sleeping several meters off the ground.
As for daytime perching – I have seen A. cybotes and relatives perching up to 2.5m often enough, and occasionally up to 3m, but rarely if ever higher than that. It could be, though, that those of us working with trunk-grounds are trained to keep our eyes close to the ground, and we may miss variation in perch height.
However, when fleeing a predator (or pesky human observer), they will flee to the tops of trees.
James Stroud
No, this was in the middle of the day (~2pm) and was observed from a long way away, so hadn’t retreated in my presence. Valid point about observer bias though.
I commonly record cristatellus at the heights you have for cybotes.
Ambika Kamath
A nice way to assess observer bias is when one is looking for higher-perching anoles along with trunk-ground anoles. When looking for both A. carolinensis and A. sagrei, the highest we saw sagrei was still only a couple of meters, whereas carolinensis was regularly observed higher.
Craig
From a 4th floor window at an office building, I observed an anole species in a nearby tree. Height was around 9m. I am hoping it was Carolinensis but didn’t have my binoculars on me.