On our recent field trip to Mexico, we were joined by AA contributor Ramon E. Martinez-Grimaldo. Ramon kindly gave me this lovely sculpture of Anolis sagrei. It’s the nicest anole sculpture I’ve ever seen! It’s made of resin and the artist is Luis Ivan Huerta. Check out his website; in the section “dermoplastias,” he put a picture of the anole’s sculpture. Perhaps Luis will see this post and tell us whether it’s possible to order other anole creations!
Author: Jonathan Losos Page 66 of 130
Professor of Biology and Director of the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in Saint Louis. I've spent my entire professional career studying anoles and have discovered that the more I learn about anoles, the more I realize I don't know.
Photo by David Herasimtschuk
David Herasimtschuk took this striking photo along the Rio Carbon near the town of Bribri in Costa Rica. Here’s what happened: “The story of how I photographed this image was very bizarre. I was working my way up a stream with the intent to film poison frogs along the bank, and I saw the blue morpho floating down the stream. It was fluttering and still alive, but was being harassed by a school of very hungry fish. Feeling sorry for the animal and curious to see a blue morpho up close I pulled it out of the water. At that point it wasn’t doing to well, but I felt bad throwing it back in the stream, so I placed it on a branch thinking if it might be able to rest and dry off. I then left to film frogs, and came back about a half an hour later. When I returned the butterfly was gone. Initially I thought it had survived and flew off, but then I saw a bright blue shape in the mouth of stream anole a couple feet from where I had placed it. It was a strange set of events, and it definitely reinforced my belief that when you live in a tropical forest everything wants to eat you.”
This photo is a treat from tweet-o-sphere, posted by Miguel Angel Zapata, who did not respond to my request for more information. And that’s really all I’ve got to say. Anolis taylori is a relatively little-known anole from southern Guerrero, Mexico. As far as I’m aware, there’s only been one paper written on this species, by Fitch and Henderson in the Journal of Herpetology in 1976 (and this paper, in turn, has only been cited five times). The species apparently is usually round in boulder piles, on the sides of rocks, as well as on rocks and trees. Does anyone know any more about this species?
Here’s the abstract to that paper, which also concerned Anolis gadovii:
Anolis gadovii and Anolis taylori are medium-large, saxicolous anoles of southern Guerrero, Mexico. The first named species is confined to a small area near Tierra Colorada, about 50 km inland, the second is limited to the immediate Coast Range in the vicinity of Acapulco. For both the habitat is on steep, wooded slopes with piles of large, loose boulders. Compared with other anoles, these are relatively stenothermic and tolerant of high temperatures, with a preferendum between 29 and 30 (at least for A. taylori). The habitat of A. gadovii, especially, is xeric, and during the dry season the anoles tend to stay deep in the rocks where temperature remains low and humidity is high. In both species reproduction is suspended during the drier part of the year and by the beginning of the rainy season in July the population consists essentially of adults. In areas of favorable habitat with high population density of A. taylori many home ranges were found to overlap. Favorite perches and look-outs were used by a succession of individuals with frequent territorial contests. Males of A. gadovii and A. taylori are about the same size, females of A. gadovii are somewhat smaller, and females of A. taylori are markedly smaller. Anolis dunni, a non-saxicolous species living at somewhat higher altitude, is like A. taylori in many of its characters, and is annectent to other montane species.
No, it’s not a hybrid, but why do some anoles do this? And how? Read all about it in a recent post on dust tracks on the web.
Photo by Luke Mahler.
I have noticed things like this myself. Some times when you noose a lizard, the scales underneath the noose turn dark. And so species show patterns when they are stressed that they don’t normally flaunt, like the A. garmani below. Anyone have thoughts or similar observations? Or a better photo of the phenomenon in garmani? Some images online suggest that males do this to a lesser extent when being aggressive to other males.
I was communicating recently with an eminent Gondwanan herpetologist, one who has published far and wide on many issues pertaining to many species. I remarked that it was time that he/she reached the pinnacle and worked on anoles. I received this response:
“To my mind, an anole is a little like a bicycle with training wheels – quite useful for youngsters to practice on and develop their skills. But just a pale shadow of the subtlety and sophistication of real lizards. They just make it too easy to get lots of papers in good journals, and discover neat things. Where’s the challenge?”
If I were a brown anole, I’d take offense at a flag like this, too!
Pat Shipman from the AA Little Cayman Bureau checks in:
The observation that anoles nod at inanimate objects (or possibly at anoles the observer hasn’t spotted) is not new.
A few days ago, I watched an adult male sagrei repeatedly unfurling his dewlap and displaying… at an orange landscaping flag that marks the location of a large septic pipe underground. What was most interesting is that the flag was fluttering in the breeze and that it was a shade of orange almost exactly the same as the sagrei’s dewlap. Alas, I did not have a camera handy to record this event.
Has anyone else noticed sagreis paying special attention to orange objects?
According to Williams and Rivero, the name occultus was chosen for the anole they described in 1965 because it means “hidden,” referring to the unexpected finding of a new species in such a well-trodden spot (“The discovery of so distinct a species in an island thought to be well known herpetologically and in which the anoles have received special attention must give us pause.”). But to the unknowledgeable, “occultus” sounds more mysterious, more preternatural, befitting such a spectral, gnome-like species that is so rarely seen and so little known.
On a recent trip to western Puerto Rico, I was fortunate to visit a locality where they can be found readily at night. In a short evening, we found five clinging to the ends of twigs (as well as a dozen green giants). Naively, I thought that I’d come back during the day and locate some to see where they live when they’re active, and what they do. Ha! Much, much easier said than done. How do you find a little, camouflaged gray match-stick of a lizard in the dense vegetational matrix that is a tropical forest? The answer: you don’t, and I didn’t.
I’m thirsty! Photo by J. Losos. For more on drinking occultus, check out Manuel Leal’s recent post on Chipojolab.
Indeed, there are almost no data on the natural history of this species, except where it sleeps. The little that we do know suggests that they are just what they look like–twig anoles. Some of the few that have been found have been on twigs, though a surprising several have been on leaves or ferns. They seem to creep slowly, though no one has published a good behavioral description.
Photo by J. Losos
Since the description of this species in 1965, there has only been one paper written on the diurnal natural history of this species, published by Preston Webster in 1969–44 years ago (go ahead, read it yourself)! Someone needs to go out and find these guys and see what they do! How to do it? Go find them at night and come back before dawn and watch them as they wake up and get out of bed. And here’s a bonus–George Gorman published a paper suggesting they sleep in pairs–that’s right, pair-bonding twig anoles!
Note that these photos were taken of animals captured and placed on twigs, as was the lizard which subsequently started drinking raindrops discussed on Chipojolab.
And here’s one acting like a real twig anole. Photo by J. Losos.
Up high displaying green anole. Photo from this website, which has some nice other reptile shots.
Many animals use different parts of their habitat for different activities–eating in one place, mating in another, and so on. This hasn’t been studied in many anoles, but has been documented in several. In addition, many species alter their habitat use in the presence of competitors, and this has been widely demonstrated in anoles. However, few have studied the interaction of the two phenomena: is the extent of behavioral partitioning among habitats affected by the presence of competitors?
To address this question, Ambika Kamath and colleagues studied green anoles on several islands in Mosquito Lagoon in the Intracoastal Waterway of Florida. In this area, a number of small “spoil” islands were created when the waterway was dredged half a century ago. These islands were quickly colonized by plants–and now are covered with very large trees–and then by green anoles. More recently, the invasive brown anoles have arrived on the scene on some of the islands.
Kamath et al., whose research was recently published in a paper in Breviora, chose four islands, two with brown anoles, two without (freely available, as are all MCZ publications, on the museum’s website). On these islands, they recorded habitat use and behavior. As predicted animals forage at lower heights than where they perch. One possible explanation is that they sit at vantage points looking for prey, then go down and catch them. And as predicted, males display at particularly high spots. The explanation here is not clear, but as reported recently for A. cuvieri, males seem to like to display higher than their rivals. Finally, once more as predicted, in the presence of brown anoles, green anoles shift upwards in all respects.
The interesting finding, however, is that the shift is essentially parallel for all activities. Animals move downward the same amount to capture prey and upward the same amount to display. This would suggest that there is not an optimal height for feeding or displaying, or perhaps that the optimal height changes in the presence of brown anoles. That would be readily understandable with regard to feeding–the voracious brown anoles probably vacuum up the low-lying food, so no point in dropping down as low to feed as in their absence. Why males continue to move up even higher is less obvious, though it may be just that competitors are now perching higher, so a male has to go higher yet to display above them.
This paper represents the sort of detailed behavioral study that is all too infrequent for anoles. How these lizards modulate their behavior in response to conditions is fascinating and often surprising. Much remains to be learned, and most anole species–well, at least in the Caribbean–are amenable to behavioral observation.
Anolis stratulus
Anolis evermanni
Anolis gundlachi
Ok, this post has nothing to do with Frank Sinatra other than his nickname. But what about blue eyes in anoles? They seem to pop up all over anole phylogeny. For example, in my recent trip to Puerto Rico, three anoles had cerulean peepers–A. evermanni and A. stratulus, which are closely related, and A. gundlachi, which is more phylogenetically distant. And blue eyes occur in other anoles, such as A. etheridgei from Hispaniola.
The observation raises two questions:
1) Just how phylogenetically widespread is the occurrence of blue eyes in anoles? I know I’ve noted blue-eyedness from time to time, but I haven’t get tracked and can’t remember in which species. I propose the Anole Annals community take it upon itself to compile a list of blue-eyed anoles. If you know of one, please post a comment and, even better, add a photo.
2) Why? I can’t believe there is an adaptive significance to having blue eyes per se. Is it genetically linked to some other adaptive trait? Could sexual selection have a role (though I don’t know of sexual dichromatism in eye color)? Other animals exhibit interspecific variation in eye color and I bet there’s a literature trying to explain it, but I’m not familiar with it. Would make an interesting project!
Some quick googling reminded me of a few other examples, below. Who am I missing? And does anyone have a good photo of blue-eyed etheridgei?
Anolis transversalis
Anolis peraccae
Anolis oculatus