Anoles & Jurassic Park

Photo taken a year ago on the rim of a volcanic crater on the island of St. Eustatius, note the lizard bags

After finally finishing the Jurassic Park original trilogy, I must modify my belief that working with Anoles is akin to working with dinosaurs. While some anoles are very bite-y (fair enough), none of them have ever torn apart our car, lifted us up in their talons, or commandeered a boat and ransacked San Diego. This is definitely a good thing—I shudder to think at the liability waivers we would have to sign if our study subjects tended to eat us.

Instead, no matter the size of anole, we get to hold them and pop them in a cloth bag for further study. One of the visual features of these trips are the bundles of cloth bags, with a lizard in each, that we clip to our backpacks through the day. We clip them to the backpacks for safekeeping—this ensures we don’t accidentally sit on the lizards and are aware of not letting them overheat in the sun.

Once back at the airbnb/hotel/campsite, we usually string them up on a clothesline, often according to species, sex, and date of capture. Again, this is to prevent accidental squishing, while also keeping some semblance of order. This means that at any site where were are catching lizards, I’ve accumulated photos of all the various places we’ve stored nuestras lagartijas. These photos, to me, provide endless amusement—particularly when I’ve hung them above my bed as they bring back memories of listening to the anoles wiggle around at night.

In total this trip, we’ve likely seen fourteen (Table 1) species of anole (just under half of the total anole diversity of the island). There are another two species that we may have seen, but as they look almost identical to A. cybotes we were unable to confirm that they were a different species. As well, A. distichus is actually a group of closely related sub-species and the “green ones” are actually a species complex with some number of distinct species that varies depending on who you talk to. We’ve binned them all into their major groupings, but it’s anyone’s guess as to how the species concept actually is applied. Despite my hopes, we were unable to find the third and final species of crown-giant, Anolis baleatus—my fingers are crossed for this summer when we return for the full 6-week field season!