March 2013 was a strange March in my neck of the woods: the American southeast. Down south, we had a number of remarkable cold waves pass through the early-spring season. Though these cold fronts weren’t quite as dramatic as those entirely-scientifically-accurate and precisely-represented megastorms-of-doom depicted in the hit motion picture The Day After Tomorrow, they were still quite impressive in their own right. Definitely more freeze warnings than I’m used to in March… at least in Florida and Georgia. Not so much in Alaska. Up there, it’s frigid mayhem as usual.
Anyhow, at the end of March, my family headed down from Valdosta, Georgia to Mt. Dora, Florida (a bit north/northwest of Orlando in Lake county) to visit with Kid A’s grandparents. There wasn’t too much hiking / outdoor-activity scheduled for that weekend. Easter was the name of the game. Wabbits. Well, Easter wabbits and the season finale of The Walking Dead. Still, as is often the case in central Florida, sometimes you don’t really have to look very far to find some cool stuff, particularly when the weather finally warms up after a delayed and tedious late-winter departure…
Consider for our example this Sago palm, Cycas revoluta:
The Sago palm is popular in southeastern landscaping. It’s not actually a palm; it’s a cycad. Native to Japan, you can easily find Sago palms situated comfortably in yards, in parks, on campuses, around hospitals (and there are many), and pretty much around any given parking lot in the American southeast, especially in central Florida. The species grows well down here and seems to be somewhat resilient to our infrequent-yet-reliable cold snaps of minor doom. My parents have this one in their yard:
In central Florida, Sago palms are also anole meccas, particularly with the non-native Cuban brown anoles, Anolis sagrei. When I visit my parents in Mt. Dora, this is the first place I look for Cuban brown anoles. They are always present — always hanging out on those awesome cycad leafs. Keepin’ it real.
On this visit, however, I noticed a little somethin’-somethin’ different on one of the fanned leaves: a deceased anole, seemingly basking in the warmth of the afterlife in central Florida. (I’ll try to abstain from making the obvious ageist jokes that immediately spring to mind when I think of the afterlife and central Florida.)
Sure enough, there was a dried-up anole carcass basking on one of the Cycad leaves. Though I’m not an expert in reading anole carcasses, it looked like a Carolina green anole, Anolis carolinensis — and not the expected Cuban brown anole. A mere hint of green was still visible on its back, as well as the white dorsal stripe sometimes present in the species. Body shape seemed more green than brown, as well — from what I could tell.
Of course, the Carolina greens typically hang out much higher in this part of central Florida. When I was a kid, I’d often see them down low, despite being trunk-crown ecomorphs, but with the rise of Cuban brown anole population density, the greens have essentially taken to higher ground. The low-ground —the trunks, the shrubs, the lower palms— yeah, that’s the territory of the Cuban brown anole.
So what did this anole in? Was it conquered by a rival Brown anole? Did it simply pass on to Anolis-Elysium after a hopefully-productive run of head-bobbing, dewlap-fanning mayhem? Or did it freeze to death during one of March’s ugly cold fronts? I’m not sure, though my spider senses tingle that the cold may have done it in. To be honest, however, I must admit that I am not a super-genius, and I have never been bitten by an irradiated super spider. It’s just a guess. The body was, for the most part, in pretty good shape (other than the fact that, you know, it was dead, and such).
Elsewhere on the Sago palm, I found plenty of the expected Cuban brown anoles, doing their thing. In central Florida, I swear the Cuban brown anoles love these Sago palms more than the retirees love The Villages community. Slap a fence around the Sagos, add a Publix, kick the kids out, and you’d essentially have the anole-version of Florida’s premier retirement community, only for lizards. Ah, Florida. Bask in the bountiful sunshine! Even after death!
A slightly different version of this post was published on Dust Tracks.
~ janson
- Anolis garmani in South Florida; 11 June 2016 - September 18, 2017
- Florida Greens and the Suprascapular Spot - August 22, 2017
- Basking in the Florida Sunshine… - April 12, 2013
Martha Muñoz
Natural selection in action! I think the little guy got caught in the cold and was chilled below this lower thermal tolerance (CTmin) – check out my post examining similar corpses here, and my posts discussing research on rapid acclimation and CTmin evolution in Florida invasives here and here.
Janson
Sorry for the delay in responding, Martha. Time and space are a bit unhinged on my end of the wires. Heh. And double-thanks for the link-framing. After our rather bizarre and late winter in south Georgia, I was curious to see how strongly our Cuban brown anole clusters would fare by April. Short answer: Very well, thank you very much. The sagrei are very much out and about. Extremely active!