Photo: Mikel2500, iNaturalist
Happy Thursday!
Today’s anole is the Bronze anole, Anolis aeneus! The Bronze anole can be found on most of the Grenadines (the small islands between St. Vincent and Grenada) and Grenada itself, and has been introduced to Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana.
Bronze anoles can be found in forests and some urban environments, and is one of many anole species that also feed on plant matter (Simmons et al., 2005), like nectar and seeds. Males have an SVL of 77mm while females are 55mm.
Photo: Mark Hulme, iNaturalist
Though called the Bronze anole, not all individuals are brown/bronze; some may be greyish brown or olive and their mottled pattern may be light or dark. The dewlap of the Bronze anole is pale white or green and spots of orange or yellow may be near the front edge. They spend a lot of time in a ‘survey posture’ sitting on tree trunks surveying the habitat for prey items that may come along.
Hybridisation between A. aeneus and A. trinitatis (St. Vincent bush anole) has been found to occur, with the possibility of fertile offspring (Losos, 2009).
Photo: Mike G Rutherford, iNaturalist
...And also like every other anole. Every week. #DidYouAnole?
- #DidYouAnole – Anolis allogus - December 24, 2021
- #DidYouAnole – Anolis gundlachi - November 12, 2021
- #DidYouAnole – Anolis phyllorhinus - November 5, 2021
Lisa McCune-Noll
They’ve been in the pet trade from Guyana for awhile now. I first kept “Guyana blue anoles” in about 1997, and on and off since then. Not for a few years though. They were purchased from a large chain pet store, “Petland”, so were not just available to specialist hobbyists – at one time I had about 8 of them but I suspected they were all male. I tried for years to get them positively ID’d. While a couple looked identical to this A. aeneus, others looked identical to A. roquet roquet – which is what I though they all were, and one I thought looked like A. trinitatus. I do have some physical photos of the animals, I could dig out if it might help in an anyone’s research to place the time of introduction to Guyana. I’d still like to get some if Guyana is open for export – their lemon yellow dewlaps and turquoise bodies was very beautiful. The mottled banded ones (the A. aeneus) also did get a sort of turquoise blue-ish suffusion, that I guess resulted in the petstore name of “blue anole”.