Photo: Wilmar Agudelo Sánchez, iNaturalist

It’s been a while since we’ve looked at an anole from South America, so why not go all the way over to an an anole that is probably at the highest elevation an anole species has ever been found: Anolis heterodermus, the Flat Andes anole!


Photo: Alejandro Lopez, iNaturalist

Anolis heterodermus lizards are arboreal and can be found on montane elevations in Colombia and Ecuador at about 2,600 m (8,530 ft). As you can guess, living at an such an elevation should be too cold for a lizard, but the Flat Andes anole is ok with this. They have been found to have wider preferred and body temperature ranges than expected for anoles and have adapted to take advantage of the limited hours of sun that the area gets (Méndez-Galeano & Calderón-Espinosa, 2017).

These anoles are large rich green to olive lizards with males being slightly larger than females at 85.4mm and 85mm respectively. They have wide banding on their bodies and both males and females have a patch on their tails that have been observed to change from red to blue throughout the day. This patch is larger in males (Beltrán, 2019) and is another sign of sexual dimorphism in this species. Their dewlaps are pink striped.

More on Anolis heterodermus from the pages of Anole Annals here.


Photo: Javier David Quiroga Nova, iNaturalist

Latest posts by Chelsea Connor (see all)