Category: Natural History Observations Page 13 of 34

httpv://youtu.be/Du9oQr8PQC4

This occurred at 10:20 AM April 12, 2004 in South Miami Florida. I was working in my kitchen at my home in South Miami Florida with my back porch door open, when my attention was captured by a loud “yelp-yelp” sound in repetition. I also noticed that I heard the “distress” call of a cardinal – similar to what I would hear if there was a cat or snake in my backyard. I grabbed my Sony cybershot 3.2MP and ran out my back door. On an adjacent pony tail palm (Nolina recurvate) just below the crown, about 8’ off the ground I saw a large knight anole (Anolis equestris) in a head down position. The anole had in its mouth, the back legs (below the knees) of a Cuban treefrog (Osteopilus sepentrionalis). The frog was making a very loud repetitive “yelp-yelp” sound while trying to climb out/away from the lizard’s mouth using its front legs. There were a pair of cardinals and mockingbirds, and a blue jay that were attracted to the sound. The cardinal was calling, and the mockingbird was approaching and slowly opening and moving its wings in a “swimming fashion,” making it obvious as it walked across the ground. The birds’ focus seemed due to the frog’s call. I have never experienced any reaction of a bird to the many resident Knight anoles in my property or elsewhere. I managed to get a short clip (meaning to take an image) and a captured still is what you see attached. After a few more cycles of yelping, the frog managed to break free from the Anolis’ mouth and hopped away behind my AC unit. Having had some firsthand past experience with Osteopilus’s antipredatory compounds, I wondered if they had the same effect on lizard’s bucccal cavity as they did on this (at the time intoxicated) human. I had heard a very similar call from an unidentified tree frog in Costa Rica 1998. It had been captured by a parrot snake (Leptophis sp.) that fell to the ground in front of a friends horse while we were jungle riding in Guanacaste. To humans, the call does sound very much like a baby, or toddler’s wail. I would be interested in knowing if it serves to attract other predators giving the “crier” a possible distracting means of escape.

The photograph above from Daffodil’s Photo Blog shows a brown anole that has just caught a roach almost as big as itself. The lizard was actually able to run away with its prey, so we don’t know if it was consumed.

This, in turn, reminds us of a previous post of DFB in which a green anole again caught a really large prey item, in that case a moth, but again the outcome was unknown.

Imagine eating a Big Mac 80% of your body weight. Think how long you could run on that, and you’re warm-blooded–lizards have a much lower metabolic rate. How often do anoles get this bonanza? Certainly, most of their prey items are quite tiny in relative terms. And how often do they catch prey that they ultimately can’t ingest? There  is a lot of data on anole diets in the literature, but no one has every synthesized it to see what general messages can be extracted, what broader questions–such as this one–can be addressed. Would make for an interesting project.

Periodically, we’ve discussed how green and brown anoles interact now that they’ve been thrown into  sympatry in the southeastern U.S. and elsewhere–do they fight, do they mate, do they just ignore each other? Perhaps, it seems, a little bit of each. In any case, the latest report comes from Janson Jones over at Dust tracks on the web, who presents a nice tryptich of observations and photos on a one-side green-brown interaction in southern Georgia. As always, the photos are sumptuous and the text entertaining.

Earlier this spring, I reported on a trip to Colombia and Venezuela to collect natural history data on several unknown anoles: A. heterodermus, A. onca, A. annectens and A. tigrinus. As part of the Scientist at Work: Notes from the Field blog on the Science webpage of the New York Times, I wrote a series of posts, which have now all been published. If you’re interested, links to them are provided below.

Losos, J.B. March 12, 2013. Quest for a little-known suburban lizard. link to article

Losos, J.B. March 14, 2013. Life of a Lizard Wrangler. link to article

Losos, J.B. March 19, 2013. Lizard Olympics. link to article

Losos, J.B. April 2, 2013. A Beach Vacation, Lizard Style. link to article

Losos, J.B. April 11, 2013. An Embarrassment of Anoles. link to article

Losos, J.B. April 25, 2013. A Night of Saurian Spotlighting. link to article

Anolis tigrinus. Photo by J. Losos.

I’ve previously posted on the surprising behavior of the Venezuelan A. tigrinus. We found them in astonishing abundance in the town of Colonia Tovar, in the mountains above Caracas. Despite their twig anole appearance and their twig anole habitat use–on twigs and other narrow surfaces–they don’t behave like twig anoles. Rather, they move rapidly and often, and seem to display a lot as well. Some Caribbean twig anoles move frequently, albeit slowly, and some display a lot, but none zip around like these guys. Moreover, we’ve seen a number of other mainland twig anoles, and they live life in the slow, slow, slow lane. So, our first day of tigrinus-watching was full of surprises. But that night, things got even more surprising, as I recently recounted in my most recent post in the Scientist at Work blog of the New York Times..

The tell-tale banded tail.

Anolis tigrinus sleeping on a stem. Photo by J. Losos.

As we walked down to the local brewhaus to grab a pizza, we casually scanned our surroundings. And as we walked by a weed patch, there was the tell-tale white blob hanging on to the end of a grass blade. It could be only one thing–an anole. In the Caribbean, this would be primo grass-bush anole habitat, but there were no grass-bush anoles here. Quick examination confirmed that it was an A. tigrinus. That’s right, a twig anole in the grass. And then as we looked around, there were more and more of them–the lot was silly with twig anoles.

The next two days, I came back during the day to look for twig anoles. Unlike in the woods where we had found them initially, the twig anoles here were hard to find during the day, even though the place was full of them at night. The few I saw were deep in the vegetation–my conclusion is that this guys are moving through the vegetation, navigating along narrow branches, stems, and grass-blades.

Which leads, of course, to the question of why in the Caribbean, grass-bush anoles use low-lying narrow vegetation in grassy, bushy  areas, while twig anoles use narrow twigs and branches up in the trees. Perhaps A. tigrinus  is just being opportunistic, taking advantage of an unoccupied habitat and moving in? Certainly a plausible explanation, but I’ve never, ever heard of a twig anole in the grass in the Caribbean. Has anyone? Not even in Jamaica, where there are no grass-bush anoles.

This in turn reminds me of the trunk-crown anoles, A. allisoni, I observed in the grass in Roatan, Honduras. If nothing else, it’s important to remember that anoles are very behaviorally flexible and adaptable. Even though they’ve specialized to different microhabitats, they aren’t so specialized that they can’t use other microhabitats when they get the chance. Crown-giant anoles on the ground are one example, but that’s another story.

In any case, A. tigrinus is a very interesting anole, and it’s great abundance would make it an excellent choice for behavioral and ecological studies.

Sweet dreams, little tiger anole. Photo by J. Losos