Author: Jonathan Losos Page 103 of 133

Anolis smaragdinus

Picture this: I’m walking back to my room in Marsh Harbour, Abaco, Bahamas and as I approach the building, a green anole (A. smaragdinus) that was on the side of the fence enclosing the air conditioner (marked x) runs down the fence to the sidewalk, then hightails it on the sidewalk–legs cycling furiously–running straight towards me. It gets to the palm tree just before I do, then dashes furiously up to the top of the palm tree. What a sight! I could read it in his eyes–“gotta’ get to that tree before that big lunkhead does. Gotta’ run, fast, fast fast.” Didn’t anyone tell him he’s not terrestrial? Couldn’t he have just run up the building wall?

The escape route

What is this odd-looking fellow?

A friend of mine wanted to know what anole species this was invading the southeastern U.S., and whether it was a threat to the green anole, Anolis carolinensis. Of course, it is nothing more than a large green anole, but it shows how transformed they are when they become agitated. The enlarged dorsal crest on the neck–bright green–and the black spot behind the eye–classic signs of a male engaged in an aggressive confrontation. Understandable how someone could have mistaken it for a different species.

Having four legs is overrated

A year ago, I reported on the surprisingly high incidence of limb loss in brown anoles from Staniel Cay, Bahamas. By the end of that trip, we found five lizards missing a part of their limb, usually the forelimb (see pictures in the previous post) out of 500 we examined (1%). We attributed this limb devastation to predators, but didn’t know what the cause was.

This year in Abaco, we’ve examined close to 400 lizards now, and have only found one case of leg loss. However, it’s an interesting one: most of a hindleg is gone. Yet, the lizard lives–the wound is healed over, so this lizard seems to be doing just fine.

Photo from http://static.flickr.com/75/183141170_b188735c85.jpg

Vega-Castillo and Puente-Rolón in the December, 2011 issue of Herpetological Review report fruit consumption by A. gundlachi, A. stratulus and, most notably, the grass-bush A. krugi. This adds to recent reports of frugivory in three other Puerto Rican species, A. cuvieri, A. evermanni and A. monensis.

As I discussed in Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree, frugivory is quite common in anoles, but there are interesting ecological and biogeographical aspects:

“Many anole species are known to eat fruits at least occasionally, and in some species at some localities, frugivory is quite common (Herrel et al., 2004). Species known to be frugivorous are larger than those not known to eat fruits, and West Indian species are frugivorous more than mainland species (30% versus 0% in Herrel et al.’s [2004] survey). Among West Indian anoles, no grass-bush anoles and all crown-giants have been reported to be frugivorous; data for other ecomorphs is mixed. My hunch is that when more species are studied, almost all but the smallest species will be found to occasionally take fruit. For example, the fact that an A. evermanni, not definitively known to eat fruit, once jumped on my shoulder, ran down my arm, perched on my thumb, and bit at the red knob of the stop watch I was holding suggests to me that this trunk-crown anole will eat red berries, just like many other anoles. Seeds (Reagan, 1996) and “seeds or fruit” (Lister, 1981) have been reported in the diet of this species, so my prediction that it is frugivorous is not very daring.

Seed eating is also reported for a number of species (e.g., Wolcott, 1923; Reagan, 1996). In some cases, these seeds may have been ingested incidentally, but in other instances, seeds, which are digested more slowly than pulp, may be the last remaining trace of a fruity meal in the digestive tract of an anole.

Nectarivory has been reported in a number of West Indian trunk-crown anoles (Liner, 1996; Perry and Lazell, 1997; Campbell and Bleazy, 2000; Echternacht and Gerber, 2000; Okochi et al., 2006; Valido, 2006), a grass-bush anole (Perry and Lazell, 2006), and two Lesser Antillean species (Timmermann et al., 2008). The greater occurrence of frugivory and nectarivory among island species compared to those on the mainland agrees with a trend seen for lizards in general (Olesen and Valido, 2003).

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