Tag: anolis garmani

Anolis garmani, the Jamaican giant anole; Miami-Dade county, Florida (11 June 2016, Nikon D7100).

Every year, I try to get down to south Florida at least a couple of times to stomp around for non-native anoles and other lizards. To date, I’ve only managed to find and photograph three Jamaican giant anoles, Anolis garmani, in south Florida — three individuals over two specific visits to the Miami-Dade area. The first two were in June of 2016, and the third (and largest) was in August 2017. The garmani featured here was the second wee giant from that first visit.

I’d been anxious to photograph garmani for quite some time, and we (James Stroud, Eric-Alain Parker, and myself) were more than a little jazzed to get our hands on both of those garmanis. A. garmani was quite high on my holy-grail list for south Florida non-natives, and, whereas this garmani may have been lacking in the “giant” aspect, it certainly didn’t lack in its color play. The lead image above through the following three profile shots were all taken within the span of two minutes (1:26pm through 1:28pm):

When we first spotted this particular wee giant biding its time in the plenty of existence, it was sporting the familiar bright emerald green:

Minutes later, in hand and not too thrilled about its potential lifespan outlook, the colors shifted quite dark…

…and then, more comfortably, back to a more-emerald green base:

Looking down from above, it had a fairly typical anole head from a central Floridian’s perspective…

But looking up from below? An extremely awesome speckled circus of contrast and patterning:

Yeah, this was one hell of a lizard to get to work with. Actually, all three of them were. I’ll save the bulk of photographs for the other two individuals for a future time, but for quick reference, here’s a single shot of each:

This is the first individual we found on June 2016:

And here’s the much-larger male Eric and I tracked down (and almost caught) in August 2017:

~ janson

Fill In The Blank: Obscure Anole Life History Traits

By Andrew Durso

On June 27, 2013

In Ask the Experts

In collaboration with the Conservation Biology course taught by Dr. Karen Beard here at Utah State University, where I am a Ph.D. student, I have been involved in gathering life history data on ~400 species of reptiles that have been introduced outside of their native ranges for an analysis of how life history traits (e.g., diet, fecundity, longevity) interact with other factors to influence the likelihood of successful establishment. Appendix A of Fred Kraus’ 2009 book Alien Reptiles and Amphibians is the source of the species list we are using, and included in this analysis are 26 species of Anolis. This is where you come in.

First, we coded all anoles as (i) sexually-dichromatic, (ii) diurnal, (iii) non-venomous, (iv) oviparous, (v) omnivores that lack (vi) temperature-dependent sex determination and (vii) parthenogenesis. Is anyone aware of any exceptions to these seven generalizations?

Second, we searched for data on clutch size, clutch frequency, incubation time, and longevity. The Anole Classics section of this site and the Biodiversity Heritage Library were particularly useful. After conducting what I feel to be a pretty thorough literature scavenger hunt, I am forced to conclude that some of these data simply do not exist at the species level for all of the species we’re interested in, or are not explicitly stated in a way that is obvious to a non-anole-expert. Of course, there is a lot of literature, including many books that I don’t have access to, and there are also lots of credible observations that don’t get published. I’m hoping that some of the readership here can help fill in at least some of the blanks in the table below. As one member of the team, I did not collect all of the data that are filled in myself, nor have I personally vetted every value, so if you spot an error please do point it out.

Two important points:

Many environmental factors obviously influence the life history parameters of our beloved and wonderfully plastic reptiles, so we appreciate that many of these values would be better represented by ranges and are dependent on latitude, altitude, climate, and many other factors. Where a range is published, we are using its median value.
I should also emphasize that, because of the large size of this study and the diversity of taxa included (ranging in size from giants like Burmese Pythons, Nile Crocodiles, and Aldabra Tortoises to, well, anoles and blindsnakes), it is more important for the data to reflect the relative values of these life history parameters across all anoles (and all reptiles) than it is to specifically and precisely represent all known variation within a given species of anole.

Without further ado (for your enjoyment, and because I know from my own blog that nobody reads posts lacking pictures, I’ve embedded an image of each species):

Species	Median clutch size	Median clutches per year	Incubation time (days)	Maximum longevity (months)
A. aeneus	2
A. baleatus
A.bimaculatus	2		43	84
A. carolinensis	1.15	6	41.5	65
A.chlorocyanus	1	18
A. conspersus	1
A. cristatellus	2.5	18		83
A. cybotes	1	18	45
A. distichus	1	16	45.5
A. equestris	1	1	48	149
A. extremus
A. ferreus	1	18
A. garmani	1.5	18	67
A. grahami	1
A. leachii
A. lineatus
A. lucius	1	3.5	60
A. marmoratus	2		50
A. maynardi
A. porcatus	1	18	63.5
A. pulchellus	1
A. richardii	1
A. sagrei	2	20	32	22
A. stratulus
A. trinitatis	2		50
A. wattsi	1

Thanks in advance. I think this is a great blog and I hope to post something more interesting on here soon.

Famous Anolis Painting

By Jonathan Losos

On May 11, 2011

In Anole Art, Literature, and Humor

Name that lizard.

Mark Catesby was a famous wildlife artist who preceded Audubon by 100 years. He is best known for The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahamas Islands, which is the subject of an article, “Catesby’s Gallery: A Trailblazing Naturalist in the New World,” in the February, 2011 issue of Natural History magazine. The article has reproductions of a number of his paintings, mostly birds, but also plants a crab and… “in a whimsical painting, Catesby shows a Jamaican Anolis lizard, splay-legged and getting a toehold on leafy sprigs of a mainland tree, the sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua).” Elsewhere, the article comments that the pairing of the Jamaican anole with a Carolina sweet gum was “seemingly random.” More importantly, what is the anole? My guess is a female A. garmani. But, the color might also be consistent with an A. grahami aquarum. Thoughts?

(p.s. Thanks to Pops for pointing out this article to me)

Tag: anolis garmani

Anolis garmani in South Florida; 11 June 2016

Fill In The Blank: Obscure Anole Life History Traits

Famous Anolis Painting