Rare(ish) Puerto Rican Anoles

Another Revell Lab (Liam, Kristin, Graham) trip to Puerto Rico this spring, and another series of encounters with the diminutive Anolis occultus and the spectacular Anolis cuvieri. Both of these species can be quite challenging to find, but we have had some good success in several locations in the Puerto Rican karst region.  In January, we observed many individuals of both species

            

And managed to get a few in-hand for pictures

    

We also found a juvenile cuvieri, which has a gray coloration and an ontogenetic shift to green as they age:

Unless they happen to be one of the brown morph adults, which are rare compared to the green morphs. We did find one brown morph out of perhaps a dozen green:

 

 

 

 

In March, we also succeeded in finding individuals of both species at a different location

Some spectacular animals!

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2 Comments

  1. Jonathan Losos

    Fantastic! We know almost nothing about the natural history of A. occultus, other than where it sleeps. It would be a great project for someone to find them at night and then come back at dawn and watch what they do during the day.

  2. Pat Shipman

    Spectacular is the word! Beautiful — and tiny.

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