Howdy y’all!
This week we’re going green again with probably one of the best anole names ever (next to apletophallus maybe). It is the trunk-crown anole, Anolis smaragdinus, the Bahamian Green anole.
Quick side note: It appears that some of the authors on this site (Jonathan), disagree about how awesome the name is.
Now it’s name translates to “emerald” from Latin, which is entirely fitting because it is a gorgeous green anole, with a GREEN (sometimes yellow-green) belly. Please forgive me for the gratuitous pictures of smaragdinus. I love a good green anole.
Like all its cousins it can change that green to drab brown, but it’s face is a bit more pointy and it has a red-orange or deep peach colored dewlap.
And as the name implies, this lizard is from and is endemic to The Bahamas.
There are two recognised subspecies, A. s. smaragdinus and A. s. lerneri. The main differences between them being an axillary (“armpit”) spot that A. s. smaragdinus has, and occasional chin spotting, and then their size. Anolis s. lerneri males are larger, with an SVL of up to 64mm and have a pointier head.
The Bahamian Green anole was observed in a study by Dr. Losos and colleagues where they were introduced to a small uninhabited islet that is occasionally (due to the tide) connected to a larger one by a strip of rock. These trunk-crown anoles are rarely found on the ground, but when Dr. Losos and his colleagues returned to the islet, the lizards had dispersed to and colonised the larger islet. This is a really interesting note because arboreal anoles aren’t often, if at all, observed going to ground and traveling to colonise such vegetation.
Bonus! Here’s a very yellow smaragdinus found by James T. Stroud and some more posts about this anole!