Tag: Florida Page 1 of 2

A Summer of Observing an Allison’s Anole Colony in Florida

Imagine being notified that someone is at your door, only to find this friendly fellow on your doorbell!

Video linked above

This is the everyday experience for residents of a lush neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, that have had a rogue Allison’s anole colony pop up and spread across their houses and yards. Many residents love and cherish the beautiful anoles and have been happy to share them with me. So these pictures are the result of this summer’s visits to the colony. Enjoy these beautiful anoles and the stories that come with them!

Having heard about the location, I sent letters to all the homeowners in the area, requesting permission to study the colony. Many homeowners generously allowed me to wander their properties with gates kindly opened for me.

The male above is one of the alpha males near the epicenter. Around 70-80% of the males observed were on houses, instead of trees and bushes as normally expected from an arboreal anole.

The other alpha male of the epicenter is pictured below in the next three pictures.

His territory includes the lily plants where the first anole was spotted by the homeowner in 2017. This is clearly defined as the epicenter, since the rest of the surrounding homeowners said that they did not see the A. allisoni until a year or two later.

Here is his reaction to me getting too close and bothering him.

A female, pictured above warily watching me, is less dressed to impress and more to camouflage.

One of the most common ways for invasive anoles to spread is through the plant trade. Bromeliads, lilies, and other thick shrubs are imported from Cuba or other countries in the Caribbean with anole eggs unknowingly hidden in their leaves and trunks. When the plants arrive and are placed in a lush garden, or kept at a nursery, the eggs hatch and the anoles grow and being to reproduce, starting a new non-native population.

Pictured above is one of the many new arrivals to the colony this season. Eggs are laid from April-October and hatch from May-December.

A male, pictured below, whose territory does not include any houses, but a few trees and a fence, displays and then scurries away to hide in his tree.

Before catching sight of me, he was proudly displaying himself.
After noticing me he escaped into his tree.

Across the street, two anoles mate while clinging to the side of a house. You can see the drastic sexual dimorphism in this species in this picture, as well as the deep blue coloration that comes out in the males while mating or during territorial disputes.

The anoles seem to prefer properties on the block with houses that have rough stucco walls to cling to, for example the beautiful male below. Houses with smooth exterior siding are shunned by A. allisoni at this colony.

The male below is one of my personal favorites at the colony, a male with almost every color of the rainbow! I only saw him during one visit in July, and in my many visits since then, I have not once seen him. Did he leave to find a new territory? Or was he eaten by a predator? I hope to one day see him again.

Above, another alpha male surveys his territory from a branch, and after catching sight of me, decides to leap away and leave the scene.

Video linked below.

He leapt away.

Video linked below.

And then he taunted me in his successful escape.

Another blue male and a female from his territory, a few feet away.

The colony’s active season is between March and September. Outside of these months, the males have subdued colors, remain brown most of the time, and hide in nooks and crannies of the exterior of the houses.

A young male watches me as I take his picture, above. It was a great experience to find one mid-transition from juvenile to adult and see the colors coming in nicely. Sadly, I have not seen this anole either since then.

A male on the northern outskirts of the colony displays from a tree.

A male with some vivid light blue coloration peeks over the top of a fence to spy on me.

This is an interesting observation. Note the markings on this male clinging upside down to the side of a fence. Was he grabbed by a bird or bitten by a rival male? The rounded imprint close to his legs seems to give away some kind of injury.

This young one is fresh out of a shed!
A vivid green female peers at me inquisitively.
A juvenile popping its head out from a bush.
Usually I was able to spot at least one mating pair on each of my visits.
An interesting observation, this adult male with no blue, only green.
A common territorial dispute.
This male has proclaimed himself King of the Gutter, and basks in his territory.
This male is acrobatically clinging upside down to a copper pipe.
It was interesting to see the variety in the blue coloration.

Just a year ago, I believed I would have to journey to Cuba to see these exotic creatures. Little did I know I would be spending the following summer with them without leaving home!

I will return to the colony March 2022 to continue my observations. Follow me on iNaturalist as well for more anole content!

If you’re interested in seeing more Florida Allison’s anoles, please visit my Instagram @dailyanole. Don’t forget to watch my video on this colony as well!

Searching for the Elusive Allison’s Anole in South Florida, Part II

 

After my resounding success mid-October searching for Anolis Allisoni, a rare yet beautiful anole native to Cuba that has been found in Florida, I very recently returned to Naples to search, this time, at two different addresses reported to contain the elusive anoles.

Upon returning to the first address, I had to search for a long time, 20-30 minutes, before finally stumbling upon one adult male A. Allisoni relaxing on the top of a fence.

I only managed to snap one picture of it in this pose before it hopped onto a palm tree on the other side of the fence. As it slowly made its way up the tree, while cautiously keeping an eye on me, I snapped a few more photos.

After this, I moved on to the next address, about 15 minutes further south in Naples. The area to search was very small, but there were several dense bushes to sift through. After a half-hour spent combing the bushes and peering into the greenery, I finally spotted another adult male A. Allisoni in the underbrush, close to the ground. Unfortunately, he was so deep in the bushes that there was no way to get a clear photo. After an extensive chase, where I scratched myself all over with pointy branches as I tried pursuing the elusive anole through the bushes, he eventually disappeared.

Defeated, I looked up and spotted a small, likely female, A. allisoni hopping from twig to twig much higher in the trees above. This one also completely disappeared as I went to take a picture, unfortunately. However, just as I was about to give up hope and leave, I spotted one final small anole climbing the trunk of a nearby tree at hip level. I crept over and quickly wrapped my arms around the tree where I last saw the anole, and, sure enough, safely snagged it!

Again, at first glance, it appears to be a green anole. But look at the ear cavity. In this observation of a male A. allisoni, the ear cavity is also more of a gash, instead of a hole. And the large scales on the snout would also imply A. allisoni. What do you think?

Join me on Instagram @dailyanole to follow my adventures!

Why Are Some Brown Anoles Orange? A Laboratory Study

An orange Anolis sagrei used in the study. Image by Beth Reinke.

Readers of Anole Annals know that Florida populations of Anolis sagrei now include red-orange individuals [1, 2, 3]. I learned more about this new color by conducting the first scientific study on orange skin coloration in Anolis sagrei.

Before I go any further, I owe a thank you to those who documented their orange A. sagrei findings on Anole Annals. Previous posts confirmed that what I was seeing in the lab wasn’t an anomaly. As I learned more about the sightings of these orange anoles, it became apparent that the orange phenotype was rather common. The posts also helped me understand when this odd coloration was first noticed (only in the last decade!). I was even able to meet with one contributor in person.

The first thing I noticed was that there is quite a bit of diversity in the distribution of orange coloration on the bodies of the lizards themselves. Most of the posts on Anole Annals showcase full-bodied orange lizards [1, 2, 3]. I found that partial orange coloration was just as common. Take, for example, this male whose orange coloration was limited to his tail and hind legs.

A biologist’s first intuition is to wonder how differences in coloration might influence survival. Most of my research project was focused on identifying fitness differences between brown and orange lizards. I was working under the impression that orange skin suddenly appeared in the population and became common very quickly. I knew that there are cases when new phenotypes become common for no reason (genetic drift). Nonetheless, we don’t normally expect to see a new phenotype become common in a short amount of time. I suspected that orange lizards had an easier time surviving or breeding than the brown ones. But I was surprised that a color as conspicuous as orange could be so successful. I reasoned that it couldn’t have helped them camouflage, so why are orange lizards surviving and reproducing?

Maybe it had something to do with mate choice. Since males use their orange dewlaps to attract females, it might be that a completely orange male would look particularly stunning to a female. Even though orange might have made the males an easier target for predators, the effect on reproductive success may have outweighed the risk of predation. This is the hypothesis that I had in mind for most of the project and the one that made the most sense to me. It’s fitting, then, that when I ran a behavioral experiment in the lab, the females didn’t care at all about color! They were much more interested in males that performed a lot of pushups and head bobs (behaviors that many species of lizards use to communicate). These pushups and head bobs demonstrate a male’s physical fitness to a female.

Maybe orange reflected something in their physiology, then? I ran two different experiments to test endurance and sprint speed. The tests of endurance and sprint speed in particular took up most of the time of the project; it turns out live animals don’t usually do what you need them to do. Despite their penchant for sprinting out of sight in the wild, getting lizards to run in the lab was more difficult than you might guess. The endurance tests involved a custom-built lizard-sized treadmill. More often than not, the lizards would treat it like a moving sidewalk you’d find at the airport. Other times they’d wriggle into the machine itself (at no risk to them) and I’d have to take apart the treadmill, one screw at a time, to fish them out. No images of that, sadly.

To measure sprint speed, I needed the lizards to run up a wooden pole. Here’s a video of me trying to convince lizards to run up that pole.

I became more interested in paleontology after this project. Dead animals behave more predictably.

After all that, the data didn’t point to any difference in orange and brown lizards’ endurance or sprinting ability. I took a step back to get to the bottom of something I knew I could answer. I wanted to identify the pigments that they were using to color their skin. Having read about what gives Anolis sagrei dewlaps their red and orange color, I was expecting to see two classes of pigments in orange lizard skin: carotenoids and pterins. No one had extracted pigments from even brown A. sagrei skin before, but I wasn’t expecting to see much in non-orange skin.

I boiled lizard skin in all sorts of carcinogenic solutions to extract the pigments.
Then I separated the two types of pigments in test tubes – carotenoids at the top and pterins at the bottom.

As expected, the dewlaps had both types of pigments. Unexpectedly, brown lizard skin contained pterins. I thought this was a little odd since we don’t see red or orange on brown lizards. But, no one had done this before, so I didn’t quite know what to expect. Like brown lizard skin, orange lizard skin had pterins, but not carotenoids. This surprised me because it suggested that the orange color in orange lizards might not be due to the addition of a pigment so much as the absence of one. Melanin (another class of pigment that produces brown and black colors) typically masks the effects of other pigments that may be present. So, although I was unable to test this myself, I now suspect that the orange color is caused by a lack of melanin.

It was time to revisit that camouflage idea. I had taken for granted that orange was too conspicuous to conceal a lizard, but I needed the data to back up my claim. I collected quantitative data on brown and orange lizards’ skin color by using a spectrophotometer, which records color as the wavelengths of light reflected off a surface. The result is something that looks like this:

What A. sagrei dewlaps look like to a spectrophotometer.

One of my collaborators, Dr. Beth Reinke, applied these data to a visual model to predict how A. sagrei’s bird predators would see the new color. She identified that orange anoles are less conspicuous to bird predators. Now the strongest lead is what I had ruled out when I first began the project: camouflage!

So what’s up with orange A. sagrei? The color doesn’t make them more attractive to mates nor does it correlate to increased physical fitness. Because orange and brown skin contain the same kind of orange-producing pigment, my best guess for the mechanism is a lack of melanin in the areas that appear orange. And, although the new color looks conspicuous to humans, it may help orange individuals hide from bird predators. The benefits of orange as camouflage may explain why the new color persists in south-Floridian populations of A. sagrei.

There’s a lot left to know about orange anoles. A good next step would be to test the “orange as camouflage” result in the field. Additionally, research into the genetic basis of this phenotype may identify how it arose and the mechanism behind it. Some breeders have suggested that orange coloration is genetically dominant over brown coloration. This is something I wanted to identify in breeding experiments, but time ran out before I graduated from college.

Orange A. sagrei remain enigmatic. I hope to hear more about orange anoles from enthusiasts in the lab and the field!

Paper: Erritouni YR, Reinke BA, Calsbeek R (2018) A novel body coloration phenotype in Anolis sagrei: Implications for physiology, fitness, and predation. PLoS ONE 13(12): e0209261. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209261

Anolis garmani in South Florida; 11 June 2016

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

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):

Anolis garmani [B], 11 June 2016 (1)

Anolis garmani [B], 11 June 2016 (2)

Anolis garmani [B], 11 June 2016 (3)

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

Anolis garmani [B], 11 June 2016 (5)

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

Anolis garmani [B], 11 June 2016 (4)

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

Anolis garmani [B], 11 June 2016 (6)

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

Anolis garmani [B], 11 June 2016 (8)

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

Anolis garmani [B], 11 June 2016 (7)

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:

Anolis garmani [A], 11 June 2016

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

Anolis garmani, 06 August 2017

~ janson

Knight Anoles Eat Fruit and Pass Viable Seeds

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Figure 1. Knight anoles (Anolis equestris) are large, arboreal, and highly frugivorous lizards native to Cuba and introduced to Miami, Florida in the mid-20th century. This adult female was found perched on the trunk of a strangler fig (Ficus aurea) in Miami, Florida, a common sight in south Florida. Strong jaws and a large gape enable knight anoles to consume a range of large food items including snails, locusts, small vertebrates (occasionally), and some moderate-sized fruit. Photo by S. Giery.

I remember the first knight anole (Anolis equestris) I ever caught. Details about how I caught it are gone, but I certainly remember the resulting bloody thumb. I was impressed and intrigued by the force and stamina of its bite – I needed to study this critter (fig. 1). Motivated by the recent publication of a short paper on knight anole  diets, below, I break down a few years of research into the trophic ecology of the knight anole into a brief recount of what my collaborators and I have found.

Preliminary observations on knight anole trophic ecology
Following that first encounter I conducted a simple study of anole diet and habitat use around the Florida International University (FIU) campus in North Miami. In general, the findings showed some sensible results: Cuban brown anoles (A. sagrei; trunk-ground) perched low and ate a wide variety of terrestrial insects, Hispaniolan bark anoles (A. distichus; trunk) skittered up and down the trunk and ate – almost exclusively – ants, and Cuban knight anoles (A. equestris; crown-giant) ate larger food items than the other two species and tended to stay in the canopy (Giery et al. 2013). Again, this pattern of diet and habitat use was expected except for one thing – the composition of knight anole diet. Prior to embarking on the study, I had expected, based on their large size, strong bite force, the abundance of smaller anoles, and a few anecdotal accounts, that these powerful lizards would be eating lots of anoles. Surely these were the T-Rex of the trees and their direct interaction with other anoles was a predatory one. Yet in all the knight anoles that I dissected in this first study (n =21), not a single one contained vertebrate remains. Instead, nearly half of the diet (by volume) was fruit, specifically strangler figs (Ficus aurea; look to Supplemental table 1 for summary diet data). Our stable isotope data corroborate these observations – rather than the enriched 15N signature we‘d expect from an anole predator, the isotope data suggested similar trophic levels for brown, bark, and knight anoles. So what gives? Where was the evidence for a swaggering, arboreal meat-a-saurus?

Years later, James Stroud and I assessed the stomach contents of more knight anoles (n = 10) from a different site in Miami (Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens. James had directly observed knight anoles eating three different species of anoles there (1,2,3,4) and so we thought another look at their diet would be interesting. Once again, the majority of gut contents consisted of fruit, this time from royal palm trees (Roystonea regia). In fact the only evidence for vertebrate prey in this population was a 1 cm section of green anole tail. These data supported earlier observations (Brach 1976; Dalrymple 1980, Giery et al. 2013) demonstrating that fruit is a major component of knight anole diet, and vertebrates aren’t. It seemed that the canopy superpredator role I’d imagined for knight anoles was increasingly less likely. In fact, in all three previous examinations of knight anole diet, few instances of vertebrate predation by knight anoles are observed (table 1). The evidence spoke, knight anoles were sharp-toothed, veggie-sauruses with a deliberate, powerful bite.

Table 1. Knight anole (Anolis equestris) diet summaries (number of individuals assessed, ‘n’, are included below each study reference). Data presented in columns are the proportion of individual knight anoles with prey taxa in their stomach, P(n). For this study we also present the proportion of total stomach contents by volume, P(vol).

An opportunity presents itself
Understanding the trophic ecology of anoles has been an ongoing project of mine for some time, the paper that we’ve just published in Food Webs (Giery et al. 2017) would not have come without the serendipitous post-capture … deposition … of a few seeds. An adult male passed two royal palm seeds which were planted post-haste in the greenhouse at FIU. It took a few months but the seeds eventually geminated, demonstrating that seeds consumed by knight anoles are viable and suggesting a role as seed dispersers (fig 2).

seed dispersal in knight anole

Figure 2. Adult knight anoles (Anolis equestris) often inhabit the crowns of royal palms (Roystonea regia) in Florida and Cuba. Note the numerous ripe fruits above this displaying male photographed at our study site in Coral Gables, Florida (A). Roystonea regia seedlings resulting from seeds passed naturally by a wild-caught A. equestris. Both seeds were planted at the same time, but germinated nearly 130 days apart (B). Adult royal palms can reach 30m high and are an ecologically and economically important plant throughout their range (C). Photos by J. Stroud (A & B) and S. Zona (C).

We felt that these data filled an important gap in our understanding of how anoles interact with other species. Certainly, the literature (e.g., Herrel et al. 2004; Losos 2009) and our data from Florida (Giery et al. 2013, 2017), Bermuda (Stroud, unpublished), and The Bahamas (Giery, unpublished) show that frugivory is widespread and sometimes quite common in anoles. Yet, the fact that seeds remain viable after passing through the guts of anoles presents a new facet to their interactions with plants. For more about what we know about lizard-plant interactions go ahead and check out the references in our paper (there’s good stuff from Europe, and recently, the Galapagos).

Whether the interaction we illustrate in our paper is ecologically important (i.e., increasing germination rates via ingestion and/or dispersal) requires substantially more study. Yet, the relationship between knight anoles and royal palms has been noted for nearly a century in Cuba suggesting their interaction is more widespread than just Florida. For example, Barbour and Ramsden (1919) remarked on the frequent coexistence of royal palm and knight anoles in Cuba. Interestingly, these early works often focused on the potential consumption of vertebrate prey, despite reports from Cubans that knight anoles often ate fruit – a bias matching my own preconceptions about the nature of this great anole:

As to the food of the great Anolis [equestris] we know but little; it is surely insectivorous and Gündlach records that he once heard the shrill scream of a tree frog Hyla and found that it had been caught by one of these lizards. The country people all declare that they feed largely upon fruit, especially the mango; it is not improbable that this idea arises from the fact that they are frequently found in mango trees. We have always imagined that this circumstance was due in part at least to the excellent cover offered by the splendid growth of rich green foliage of the Cuban mango trees; it, however, has been seen eating berries (Ramsden). With good luck one may occasionally see two males of this fine species chasing one another about, making short rushes and charges at each other, accompanied by much tossing of heads and display of brilliant dewlaps When this mimic battle takes place about the smooth green top of the trunk of a stately Royal Palm, it is a sight not easily forgotten.” from Barbour and Ramsden 1919.

Anyways, we hope our short paper does two things. First, we hope that our summary of knight anole diet in Florida accurately illustrates their trophic ecology. Second, seed dispersal of native trees (royal palm and strangler fig) by an introduced vertebrate represents an interesting contrast to the negative effects usually attributed to introduced species (e.g., brown anole). We hope our observations highlight the diverse relationships between anoles and plants in the Caribbean region. Finally, we realize that our data are merely suggestive and effective seed dispersal by anoles has yet to be demonstrated. Nevertheless, we’re excited by the potential for new research directions stimulated by our observations.

Giery, S.T., Vezzani, E., Zona, S., Stroud, J.T. 2017. Frugivory and seed dispersal by the invasive knight anole (Anolis equestris) in Florida, USA. Food Webs 11: 13-16.

ESA 2016: Using Citizen Science to Learn about Invasive Anoles

2016-08-09 08.00.41In one of the few anole talks here at the annual Ecology meeting in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, James Stroud presented on a project he conducted with the Fairchild Tropical Botanical GardenJason Kolbe, and others. Together, they organized a large citizen science project engaging middle-school aged students to collect distribution and abundance data about anoles in the Southern Miami region in a program they call “Lizards on the Loose.”

In this outreach project, James and colleagues had 101 schools participate in collecting data. Armed with a handy anole ID guide created by Jason Kolbe and a video by James explaining anole biology and species differences, students and teachers set out to conduct 15 minute visual surveys. On these surveys, they recorded how many animals they encountered, the species ID, and the approximate body size using a provided standardized collection protocol and entering data into a Google forms site.

The results were overwhelming: more than 1,000 students conducted a total of 1,356 surveys resulting in 12,000+ lizard observations! This project produced massive amounts of data on very short time frames. In general, distribution patterns fell as they were expected to, although some records certainly hint at some mis-identification (e.g. some A. cristatellus locations). Unsurprisingly, the least abundant lizards were those that were hardest to detect: the species typically found high in trees.

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While the resulting dataset is impressively large, James admits that there are data quality issues with collecting data in this manner and asked for input on how to improve data collection. Specifically, he suggested that in the future they would like to incorporate photographic and smartphone GPS information, perhaps via an app. Does anyone have any suggestions for James on implementing such an app or otherwise improving the design?

James emphasized that providing meaningful natural experiences with wildlife for kids is good for conservation, fosters an appreciation for nature and helps inspire the next generation of scientists. Many of our readers may find inspiration from the success of this program and we would love to hear about it if you implement similar types of citizen science projects with anoles!

JMIH 2016: Genetic Evidence of Hybridization between the Native Green Anole (Anolis carolinensis) and the Invasive Cuban Green Anole (A. porcatus)

Photo by James Stroud

Photo by James Stroud

At JMIH 2016, I chatted with Johanna Wegener, a graduate student at the University of Rhode Island in Jason Kolbe’s lab, about her poster detailing her work identifying hybridization between Anolis carolinensis and A. porcatus in southern Florida.

Interspecific hybridization in anoles is thought to be fairly rare, with the best-known example being hybridization between Anolis carolinensis (native to the southeastern U.S.) and A. porcatus (native to Cuba) in southern Florida. I was surprised to learn how little we know about this rumored hybrid zone.

A. porcatus was likely introduced into Florida within the last few decades, but the striking morphological similarities between A. carolinesis and A. porcatus make anecdotal reports of hybridization hard to confirm. Wegener conducted the first genetic analyses of hybridization between A. carolinesis and A. porcatus. She genotyped 18 nuclear microsatellites from green anoles in Florida (Palm Beach and South Miami) and western Cuba and conducted a STRUCTURE analysis and found support for three genetic clusters consisting of Cuban A. porcatus, and two Floridian groups (one from Palm Beach and one from South Miami). With the addition of the mitochondrial ND2 marker, she found that the South Miami population had both A. carolinensis and A. porcatus haplotypes. Interestingly, there appeared to be very few recent hybrids; instead, the hybrid group appeared distinct from either parent group, suggesting that hybridization has been occurring for several generations.

In addition, Wegener looked at the variation in A. porcatus and A. carolinensis markers in each hybrid individual and found examples of some parent markers being retained at high proportions in the hybrids, possibly suggesting the retention of beneficial parent alleles in the hybrids.

Given that this study was only conducted at two sites in Florida, the exciting next step of this study is to better quantify the genetic makeup of hybrids across southern Florida and map out the hybrid zone.

Dewlap Displays in Cuban Knight Anoles (A. equestris)

While exploring the grounds of Fairchild Tropical Botanical Gardens with Janson Jones this past weekend, we extremely fortunately happened upon a large adult male Cuban knight anole (A. equestris) in full displaying swing. Despite the fact that knight anoles have an impressively large dewlap, I have often found this to be a relatively rare event, as large crown-giant species tend to display less than other smaller and more active species. This individual was displaying at a height of ~15 m, just below the fronds of a large Royal Palm (Roystonea regia). We didn’t see any other neighboring knight anoles, so were unsure if this was a directed or passive display series. In all, this lizard performed perhaps 4-5 sets of dewlap displays (each comprising of 4-5 dewlap extensions) before stopping and retreating back into the canopy.

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Anoles typically follow a predictable and repeated pattern of display that gradually increases in intensity. Initially, and rather lethargically, an individual will nonchalantly raise its head and extend its dewlap without much extra effort (stage a); described below from Losos (2009).

Adapted from Losos (2009), which itself is adapted from Losos (1985). Aggressive behavior of A. marconoi showing three stages of increasing display intensity - note stage (c) include full body elevation alongside simultaneous tail and dewlap extensions.

Adapted from Losos (2009), which itself is adapted from Losos (1985). Aggressive behavior of A. marconoi showing three stages of increasing display intensity – note stage (c) include full body elevation alongside simultaneous tail and dewlap extensions.

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This then escalates to include a slight body raise (stage b).

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And ultimately results in a dramatic finale – in full display all limbs will be extended to raise both their body from the substrate (in this case the trunk of a palm tree) and elevate their tail (stage c). In the following picture you can see this final stage of displaying where intensity peaks – albeit in this individual with a regenerated (and rather stubby) tail.

Brown Anole Predation by Red-bellied Woodpeckers in Florida

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While visiting relatives last week in Fort Myers (FL), anole enthusiast and avid wildlife photographer Kyle Wullschleger noticed a commotion among the trees while on an afternoon hike in a small neighbourhood nature preserve. On closer inspection he witnessed a group of red-bellied woodpeckers (Melanerpes carolinus) foraging on surrounding cypress trees, with a couple eventually appearing with their apparent target–non-native Cuban brown anoles (A. sagrei). He recalls some of the details:

“The photos from the sequence aren’t all that fantastic because I cropped in so it really just shows the behavior. The whole sequence the woodpecker was basically just slamming the anole against the tree and then trying to pick it apart – it was hard to tell what exactly it was doing, but I believe it eventually swallowed it whole before flying away–it hopped behind the tree so I couldn’t see it anymore.”

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“There were at least five birds all moving up and down the lower third of the cypress trees just around the boardwalk I was on. They were moving around the trees without really knocking the wood, so maybe they were purposefully targeting anoles? I only saw successful predation twice, but the brush is so thick–it’s obviously happening quite a bit.”

Sean Giery had previously discussed the main avian predators of anoles in urban South Florida, but woodpeckers didn’t make the list. Woodpeckers do occur in urban areas of South Florida; a new one to add to the list?

Bark Anole Battle Scars in Miami, FL

As it starts to heat up here in Miami, anole interactions are at the highest while males try to stake their claim for the most attractive territories in town. Earlier during an afternoon stroll around South Miami I came across this bark anole (Anolis distichus) that looks like it’s had a pretty rough time recently!

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I assume this injury to his nape is probably from another lizard, likely another male A. distichus, incurred during a territorial dispute, and not a predation attempt. Either way, it looks like it didn’t dent his confidence too much!

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