Category: Anole Photographs Page 6 of 9

Anolis gundlachi. Photo by Alejandro Sanchez.

Father Sanchez has done it again! Here’s his commentary accompanying this lovely photo: “… today I was at the Guajataca State Forest. The lowland forms of Anolis gundlachi (one of my favorite anolines) are quite smaller – and frequently paler – than those of the highlands. Incipient speciation? One can only hope.”

As for the occurrence of the cool-loving A. gundlachi in lowlands, see the discussion of this stemming from the recent symposium on the effect of global warming on ectotherms.

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.

Photo: Cesar Barrio-Amorós/ Doc Frog Photography

Cesar Barrio posted this quadtych on his doc frog facebook page. Taken from his balcony in Ojochal, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica, the photo shows Central American green anoles, A. biporcatus, mating in a cecropia tree. Other than the fact that it is a cool set of images, the photos show the dichromatism in dewlap color displayed by this species, which we’ve discussed previously, and also that the male changed color during the course of mating. I wonder why. It also illustrates that this species exhibits relatively little size dimorphism.

As a bonus, Cesar sent me a photo of the inhabitant of the next tree beyond the cecropia, an A. charlesmyersi strutting his stuff.

Photo: Cesar Barrio-Amorós/ Doc Frog Photography

Green anole displaying. Photo tweeted by Igor Alesenko.

A recent area of research in animal behavior and evolutionary biology has concerned the evolution of signals and how they are tuned to their environment to maximize detectability. Some great work on anoles has explored how variation in dewlaps both within and among species may reflect the different light environments in different places–anoles should evolve dewlap colors that contrast against their background, given the available light. Or, in behavioral terms, anoles might choose particular spots in the environment to maximize contrast.

The photo above was tweeted by Igor Alesenko, who appears to be Russian (and who has tweeted 26,980 times to his 44,147 followers–am I missing something here?). I think it’s a nice example of why contrasting with the background vegetation is important to enhance communication effectiveness (though, of course, to really assess how detectable this lizard would be to another would require analyzing the real lizard rather than a photograph and doing so in the context of the lizard’s visual system, which is more adept at detecting color variation, including in the UV spectrum, than is that of humans).

Anolis equestris displaying. Photo by Ultra Violet.

We at AA obviously have a soft spot for those monstrously grotesque, yet winningly appealing giants of the anole world. Here’s a lovely picture that just passed through the tweet-o-sphere. Good pictures of knight anoles dewlapping are few and far between, and Ultra Violet kindly allowed us to reproduce it here.

Photo from Daffodil’s Photo Blog.

Some nice photos of baby anoles on Daffodil’s Photo Blog today. Reminds me how little we know about the natural history of baby anoles.

Not sure how I came across these on the web, but I found Robert Hoogveld’s flickr page and he kindly allowed me to post these fabulous photos. Some may recall the post on Robert’s article on A. proboscis two years ago. Apparently, he has some more good stuff up his sleeves, or so he tells me.

Anolis marmoratus. Photo by Robert Hoogveld

 

Anolis (Chamaelinorops) barbouri. Photo by Robert Hoogveld.

 

 

 

Anolis oculatus. Photo by Robert Hoogveld