Hello and welcome back!
Sorry I missed last week but I’m here to make it up to you with another impressively coloured anole.
This week is Anolis gemmosus, the Gem Anole.
The Gem anole is another Ecuadorean anole where they are common in the cloud forests.
Female gem anoles have no dewlap, are mainly green in colour and typically have a tan stripe or chevron pattern down their back.
Photo by Andreas Kay
Males typically have spotting all over or in the form of stripes down their tails and bodies and their dewlaps are large starting with blue closer to their necks, shifting to green then yellow-green. They also have white stripes across the dewlap. The largest recorded Gem anole was 66mm (SVL) and they may be quite long-lived.
Photo courtesy of James A. Christensen
Their pattern makes them very cryptic and difficult to spot, and since they prefer to perch in foliage, it helps them as ambush predators.
Gem anoles don’t bask intentionally (Arteaga et al, 2013). How does that work?? Well they just happen to get filtered sunlight where they choose to hangout and wait for their prey. They don’t look for perches in direct sunlight to bask. They do appear to pick perches to sleep in however, that get exposed to sunlight when the sun rises so they can quickly reach activity temperatures.
Photo by Diana Troya