Somebody needs to work on their anole species identification skills.
Breeding season is heating up for anoles in Miami, and at least one male crested anole (A. cristatellus) is a little…confused. While collecting some baseline data for my post-doc work looking at impacts of artificial light at night (ALAN) on brown and crested anoles, I noticed a commotion on a nearby cycad. Upon closer inspection, I realized that a male crested anole was pursuing and subsequently mating with a female brown anole (A. sagrei) who was decidedly unhappy about the situation.
In case you’re wondering about the colorful jewelry at the base of their tails, both of the anoles in the photo/video are bead-tagged to allow me to reidentify them from a distance. The copulation here lasted 3-4 minutes a portion of which I managed to capture on video.
While previous reports on AA have documented coupling between A. carolinensis and A. sagrei, I haven’t seen any reports of interspecific mating between A. cristatellus and A. sagrei. Has anyone else observed this phenomenon? The two species do encounter each other quite frequently in the Miami area, so this might not be a rare occurrence. Hybridization seems unlikely given the divergence between these two species, but you never know!