I'm a herp fan who has spent my spare time in the past couple of decades traveling and photographing herps in the wild. My photographs end up on my website wildherps.com and iNaturalist.org, among other places.
Here are a pair of anoles photographed by Mitchell Robinson in Jacmel, Haiti. He is looking for help identifying them, and where better to look for such help than Anole Annals?
We have ideas about the IDs, but would like to hear from you experts before imposing any potential bias. Thanks for any help!
John
In January 2013 I was in the Amazon rainforest in Peru near Iquitos, looking for herps to photograph. This was my first significant visit to Amazonia and I was surprised at the dearth of anoles. I hadn’t (yet) caught up on enough anole literature to realize that the anole density in that area is so very much smaller than the anole density in the Caribbean or Florida. On a good anole-finding day, I only saw perhaps three or four during the day, and another five or six sleeping at night on leaves and twigs. Most of the anoles I encountered were Anolis trachyderma, such as these two sleepers. Alas, their leafy beds were perhaps not as safe as they might have hoped…
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit Puerto Rico for the first time, albeit briefly. Fortunately, a lot of anoles can be found even on a brief visit. With the help of caribherp.org and other references, I could identify most of them. I was hoping to get some help from the knowledgable readers of Anole Annals on the rest. I suspect they are mostly all juvenile Anolis cristatellus cristatellus, but the appearances are varied enough that I couldn’t be sure. Any ID help is greatly appreciated!
Unidentified Anole #1: Cueva María de la Cruz
This small brown anole and a couple of similar-looking buddies were dashing about on a large tree trunk at the edge of a grassy clearing at Cueva María de la Cruz. This small cave is in northeast Puerto Rico, near the coast, north of the western edge of El Yunque National Forest. I saw adult Anolis cristatellus cristatellus in smaller trees nearby, so it seems likely that this is a juvenile, though its pattern looked non-standard to me.
Crack that whip!
This proud Anolis cristatellus wileyae had snuck into the Butterfly Farm a few minutes’ walk from the cruise port in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. So had a few dozen of its conspecifics, but this was the only one showing off its pretty two-toned dewlap while lashing its tail back and forth dramatically. Perhaps this is a common behavior, but it’s not one that I had seen before. Do other anole species also do this kind of double-showoff?
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