Anolis garmani in a mango tree post-Hurricane Melissa. Photo by Kathryn Miller.
Inbar Maayan writes:
Kathryn Miller.
As you know, Jamaica was very badly hit by Hurricane Melissa. It made landfall in the southwest part of the island and cut across through to the north central coast before continuing northward. Images and videos are circulating that just begin to show the extent of the damage, but everyone says it’s just unfathomable.
Kathryn Miller, one of the excellent Jamaican students who has been on my field team and contributed meaningfully to anole research in Jamaica, was finally able to travel out to help her mother in Santa Cruz, in the parish of St. Elizabeth. This is near Black River, and as you might imagine, sadly the hurricane pretty much flattened this whole area. Kathryn shared with me an anole observation, and I’m submitting it in case folks would like to see a glimmer of the anoles in Jamaica post hurricane.
The photo and video (at bottom) are of an adult male Anolis garmani. Kathryn says "Found him in a fallen mango tree. All the trees in that area were actually either snapped it two or completely uprooted. He’s making the best out of a bad situation I guess. He can’t necessarily go up high anymore. Poor guy:pensive:"Anolis garmani is a Jamaican endemic, and like a true Jamaican, this guy is making the best of his situation.”
Kathryn is especially fond of the garmani. She is also a geologist and outstanding artist.I would like to take this opportunity to encourage people to use the official Jamaican government website for hurricane relief to learn more about the impacts of Melissa and donate what they might be able to.
Prologue
Nearly 1500 posts.
Over 300 contributors.
Worldwide readership.
Since its origin 15 years ago, Anole Annals has left its mark on anole researchers, reptile enthusiasts, and people curious about why these little tree lizards enchant so many of us. (Just go ahead and admit that’s a fair question!) Many posts on this blog create engaging summaries of the newest anole research, research that spans nearly every discipline of biology. But posts also include anole art, trip reports, and anole history. Anole Annals houses pages with stunning videos and classroom resources, which bring the beauty of anole biology to people outside of our established academic communities. Although the popularity of blogging has declined, the historical impact and reach of Anole Annals is undeniable.
When I made my first Anole Annals post in 2011, I thought that it was a good way to advertise my newest paper and to help establish my name in the field. But I was naïve at the time. 14 years of experience and added maturity have taught me the importance of communicating science to people outside of our immediate academic circles. Over that same timeframe, there has been a rise in anti-science propaganda and misinformation on social media that has eroded the strength of the American science apparatus. With the exception of people working in politically charged areas such as global change or vaccines, most scientists do not have training or experience in confronting attacks on science. We need to change this. We need to do it quickly.
Copied below is a blog post that I wrote to accompany a new Editorial that I published in Integrative and Comparative Biology. I argue that scientists need to step outside of our academic circles into formal and informal settings to rebuild public trust and enthusiasm in science. Our first task is to learn new and effective ways to communicate from professionals who excel at captivating audiences with diverse interests and backgrounds. I repost this here because Anole Annals has had incredible success reaching people from across academic and non-academic circles. I hope my post can bring new energy to Anole Annals and its efforts to disseminate the wonders of anole biology to wide audiences.
How Republican Support for Science Led to My Career as a Biologist
I grew up in a relatively poor, conservative family along the I-90 Rust Belt corridor of central New York in the 1980s and 1990s. My parents often worked multiple jobs to make our minimal ends meet. During the day, my father repaired boilers and pressed shirts at my Uncle John’s dry cleaning business as Rush Limbaugh played at full volume in the background. In the evenings, he worked as a boiler operator for a hospital until his body broke from strains of intense manual labor. My mother worked as a nurse before I was born, but I mainly remember her doing labor and service jobs. I enjoyed my science classes in school,* probably because I liked the outdoors as a kid. But an appreciation of science as a career path was not an inherent part of my upbringing. My parents emphasized that getting an education was my way to a more comfortable life, but they did not direct me to a particular major or career path. As manufacturing opportunities declined across the region, the expectation of attending college was a common sentiment for many kids of my generation from that area. Thus, despite my teenage adrenaline junky desire to become a smokejumper, my parents encouraged me to pursue a college education and sacrificed a great deal to put me through it. I am now a tenured professor at Loyola University Chicago.
Public perspectives on science have changed dramatically over the 80+ years of my parents’ lives. Science rose to prominence in the United States following World War II because of geopolitical competition. Publicly funded innovation and the rapid pace of scientific output were points of bipartisan national pride for the latter half of the 20th century! The US populace wanted to win the space race. The National Science Foundation’s budget surpassed 1ドル billion for the first time in 1983, under Republican Ronald Reagan, after his administration recognized that it was in the national interest to compete in a high-technology world. George H.W. Bush led the charge for the Global Change Research Act, which garnered 100-0 support in the Senate. The US population supported the development of new vaccines, antibiotics, and cures for disease, leading to the doubling of the NIH budget between 1998 and 2003. In 1999, Republican firebrand Newt Gingrich stated,
"The highest investment priority in Washington should be to double the federal budget for scientific research. No other federal expenditure would create more jobs and wealth or do more to strengthen our world leadership, protect the environment and promote better health and education for all Americans. For the security of our future, we must make this investment now."
When my parents encouraged me to pursue education in science, they did not temper their advice with their political leanings. Science was not considered "woke" or a democratic conspiracy in the 1990s. Conservative leaders of the time were advocating for science because of its economic and competitive benefits to the national interest, a message that likely resonated deeply with my parents. They thought that a career in science was a secure path to a life better than the one they were living. Full stop.
Fast forward to 2025, and I am left wondering, "What the hell happened to this nation’s respect and support for science?" * Many Americans now question whether a college education is "worth it," even though advanced education was the catalyst for the success of many people from my generation. Given the current political environment, it is difficult for me to imagine that my family would encourage my pursuit of a career in science today. In fact, my career has been a point of contention for us since 2016. It’s difficult for me to see this new generation of kids capable of undergoing the same socioeconomic transformation that led me to my current career.
This long introduction frames my motivation for the recent Editorial I wrote for Integrative and Comparative Biology. Since January 2025, the United States has witnessed the rapid acceleration of anti-science rhetoric and direct attacks on the scientific enterprise, following the blueprint laid out by the 900-page Project 2025. These attacks are more energized, pervasive, and combative than anything I have witnessed during my career. I feel an urgency to get more scientists engaged in public discourse and to update our educational systems to help students recognize propaganda and refute misinformation. The goal of my Editorial was to 1) contrast the ways that scientists communicate with the strategies that more communication-based professions use, and 2) to lower barriers for scientists to purposefully experiment with new communication strategies. The infographic to the right highlights the main points of the Editorial.
15 years ago, multiple organizations called for scientists to engage with the public and the policymaking process.
Figure 1. Anolis sagrei (photo: Michael Childs).
Invasive species are a growing problem across our increasingly globalized planet. They are often adept at establishing stable population sizes very quickly, which allows them to outcompete native species for access to important ecological resources and expand their range. You’re on the Anole Annals, so you’re probably familiar with the poster child for invasive lizards, the brown anole (Anolis sagrei).
Native to the Bahamas and Cuba, it has rapidly colonized most of Florida, USA, and has established several other invasive fronts in other parts of the world. The silver lining of many invasive species is that many of them make incredibly informative models for understanding different components of evolutionary biology, and in particular, how the action of evolutionary mechanisms, such as natural selection, plays a role during those first few years of invasive population establishment.
In northern Florida, the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) is a brackish water route that connects inland rivers to the Atlantic Ocean. In the ICW, there are several hundred spoil islands that were artificially created by the Army Corps of Engineers to control and maintain the flow of water throughout the ICW. Since their creation, spoil islands have been colonized by a diverse range of plants that provide structure for animals that happen to make their way from the mainland onto these islands. Spoil islands are often very small, and as you may have guessed, it is not uncommon to find brown anoles inhabiting these islands at varying population densities. These islands, and the ability of brown anoles to establish stable populations on them, provides us biologists an exciting opportunity: we can use spoil islands – where there happen to be few to no brown anoles – to experimentally recreate the context of biological invasion. Then, using multiple island populations as experimental replicates, we can assess how populations grow and change during those first few critical generations, and how natural selection may facilitate, or constrain, population establishment and growth in invasive species.
In 2011, we identified six spoil islands in the ICW where brown anoles were present, but in very low population sizes. We removed these lizards and then introduced adult brown anoles that we collected from the mainland onto these islands, simulating on each island an independent "invasion" event. Because these islands varied in shape and size (Figure 1), we released a varying number of individuals per island to keep the initial population density consistent. We aimed to let these populations grow over time to estimate the strength and direction of natural selection during the incipient generations following establishment. Additionally, because we had six replicate islands, we manipulated the population sex ratio of our founding generations, resulting in three islands with a 2:1 male-biased sex ratio, and three islands with a 2:1 female-biased sex ratio. This allowed us to characterize if, and how, the landscape of natural selection over the initial generations was impacted by the composition of the founding population.
We used a capture-mark-recapture study to estimate natural selection. Some islands we followed for the full six years while some islands we followed for 3-4 years. All our populations grew and established rapidly, and we found a complex landscape of natural selection during the initial generations. We measured natural selection on a variety of phenotypic traits, but the only trait we found to be important was body size. Juvenile lizards experienced much stronger natural selection than adults, where large body sizes were associated with a higher probability of survival. Natural selection tended to strengthen over time as populations grew and become established. Importantly, the strength of selection was predicted by population densities: stronger selection (but only for juveniles!) was observed in populations with a greater density of lizards. Adult anoles did not experience strong selection, but when populations experienced a male-biased sex ratio, natural selection favored a higher body condition (i.e., a greater body mass relative to the same body length), perhaps invoking the important role of competition in these small island habitats. Population sex ratio fluctuated dramatically over time, even though we began our experiment with significant sex biases across our replicates. Interestingly, we found the initial sex ratio of our propagules had a future effect on the landscape of selection experienced by juvenile lizards: when islands began with a female-biased population sex ratio, this resulted in stronger natural selection on juvenile body size in future generations. This finding may represent a unique type of founder effect, where the initial female-biased sex ratio resulted in a future effect on some aspect of population biology (like growth or competition) that indirectly resulted in stronger natural selection on juvenile lizards.
Figure 2. Selection differentials subset by age (juvenile/adult) and sex across our spoil islands and across years. Note how selection differentials tended to be highly positive and (in some cases) strengthen over time for juveniles, while those for adults tended to not show any consistent pattern.
This was a challenging and complex study that shed some light as to how brown anoles may be evolutionarily primed as successful invaders. Female brown anoles are highly fecund, and in some years can produce upwards of 40 offspring. These offspring can reach sexual maturity rapidly, and this is reinforced by strong natural selection favoring larger body sizes in the younger age class. Rapid maturation and high fecundity are likely important for how quickly brown anoles can establish invasive populations. Brown anoles also don’t live a long time in the wild. From our capture-mark-recapture data, we observed high levels of adult mortality (>80% in some years!), so it was very rare to see adults make it to year two, or even year three. Many of the ecological and evolutionary patterns we observed can be associated with competition for limited resources on island habitats (check out Calsbeek & Cox 2010 in Nature for another important island experiment), so it may be that brown anoles that reach adulthood are very familiar with a competitive landscape. Indeed, brown anoles can outcompete our native anole, the green anole (Anolis carolinensis) to access for suitable habitats where they co-occur.
Spoil islands are such a valuable natural resource. They provide important habitats for a diverse range of plants and animals, help us maintain the depth and flow of the ICW for commercial use, and are often popular recreation spots for camping, fishing, and boating. Spoil islands can also act as miniature buffers during severe storm events, like hurricanes, to reduce the impacts of severe flooding on coastal habitats. If you find yourself in Florida sometime in the future, take a swim or a kayak out and explore a few spoil islands if you can. You may be surprised at what you find! To learn more about our experiment, including more details on our findings, see our early print article here: https://doi.org/10.1093/evolut/qpaf184.
Anolis sagrei. Photo by: Thayna Medeiros de Andrade
Anolis sagrei (brown anole, Figure 1) is a small species, native from Cuba, that invaded Florida around 1800. Me, I am from Brazil, and this is the story of how I made some interesting discoveries about the brown anoles during my brief invasion to the US.
My journey in the herp world began by studying the South American lizard genus Tropidurus (Figure 2). They are basically the Anoles of the south. Widespread, a lot of species, habitat-specific morphotypes. By studying these amazing lizards, I got a scholarship and
Tropidurus imbituba. Photo by: Thayna Medeiros de Andrade
had the opportunity to choose any place in the world to do a short internship. So I chose... Alabama.
The tricky thing about studying live animals is that, no matter what you do, unpredictable things can always happen. And they did. When I first started talking to Dan Warner, our idea was to study whether inland and island females of brown anoles showed any preference between substrate mixed with salt or fresh water for egg laying, and after egg laying, compare water uptake between eggs incubated in a substrate mixed with fresh or salt water. But, as I mentioned, unpredictable things happened.
For a starter, our first question was: Do females preferably nest in substrate mixed with saltwater or freshwater? And, from the 123 eggs found, 37 (around 30%) were found on the ground. It felt like they were mocking me. Eggs found on the ground shriveled, so we were not able to incubate them. Secondly, even though we maintained the lizards under the same conditions, for some unknown reason, females from the island laid far fewer eggs than females from the inland. Lastly, all eggs died. But we will get to that later. Even with all the bumps along the way, we found some interesting stuff.
Females were captured in two locations. Inland females were captured in a residential area in Fort Walton, Florida. The microhabitat occupied by females were a mix of concrete and the gardens of the constructions. The island females were captured in an estuarine area, on a small island (Figure 3) in the Halifax River, Ormond Beach, Florida. These small islands are frequently inundated by seawater when the tides are high and, during major storms, can even be submerged.
Figure 3. Spoil island submerged in the Halifax river. Photo by: Thayna Medeiros de Andrade
Due to these conditions, we hypothesized that island females would have developed mechanisms to recognize salt in the soil. But inland females, which are naive to saline soils, would not be able to recognize this cue. And that is what we found! Females from the island avoided nesting in substrate mixed with saltwater, while inland females showed no preference (Figure 4). This indicates that there might be some local adaptation in maternal effects.
Figure 4. Difference in nest site choice by island and inland females of brown anoles. Black bars indicate the percentage of eggs found in substrate mixed with freshwater; grey bars indicate the percentage of eggs found in substrate mixed with saltwater. The number above the bars indicates the actual number of eggs found in each type of substrate, for each population.
But this got me thinking: what happens when the island is inundated during reproductive season? Do females retain the eggs until better conditions are restored? Do the eggs develop under a certain threshold of salinity? There is an open field to investigate.
Some insights of what happens come from the second part of my work. Since females from the island laid fewer eggs, we were unable to do a proper comparison of what happens to eggs incubated in substrate mixed with fresh or saltwater depending on female population. But one thing was common between them: eggs incubated under saltwater conditions barely survived a week (Figure 6). Eggs found in the saltwater pot were already lighter than eggs found in the freshwater pot, independently of female population (Figure 5a). This probably reflects an immediate water loss in saline environments rather than females actively laying lighter eggs in saline nest sites. Moreover, after a week, eggs incubated in substrate mixed with freshwater gained mass, while eggs incubated in saltwater substrate were either not growing or losing mass (water) (Figure 5b).
Figure 5. a) Mass of the eggs on the day they were found, according to the type of pot they were laid in (substrate mixed with freshwater or saltwater). b) Change in egg mass after a week (day 7 – day 0). The dashed line indicates no change in egg mass after a week of incubation; points above this line gained mass, while points under this line lost mass. Yellow triangles indicate observations for the island population, and black triangles indicate observations for the inland population.
So my guess is that during inundation, if no other type of substrate were available, females from the island would retain their eggs. Since inundations are so frequent, I also think it is a possibility that they lay fewer, heavier eggs, with a higher proportion of water, that can withstand the higher water loss rates imposed by saline environments. As for the inland females, they do not seem to recognize salt in the substrate. Even though the eggs incubated in saltwater died, they did not avoid laying eggs in substrate mixed with saltwater. So an inundation would probably affect reproductive success of this population.
Lastly, from the 31 eggs incubated in substrate mixed with fresh or saltwater, only one hatched (Figure 6). The ones incubated in freshwater substrate lasted longer, some developed until the 28th day after egg laying or more, when anole eggs usually hatch. They grew, one hit 0.8g. But, for some unknown reason, they failed to hatch. This still bugs me. If you have any ideas why, let me know.
Figure 6. Survival rates of eggs from inland females (dashed line) or island females (solid line) incubated in freshwater substrate (black line) or saltwater substrate (grey line).
In conclusion, I had an amazing time in the US, visited Disney, the Statue of Liberty, and learned a little bit more about the anoles. As for my work, it is established that brown anole females recognize environmental cues ideal for egg laying, and we found out that salinity can be one of these cues. But, since urban areas are rarely, if ever, inundated by sea water, brown anole females might not have developed the sensory ability to detect this specific cue. Or they recognize salt only above some threshold that we did not measure. In any case, there is geographic variation in nesting behavior that should be more thoroughly investigated. Moreover, we found that constant exposure to saltwater can be detrimental to embryo development. But we do not know if there is a level of salinity that allows embryo development.
I think we left a lot of interesting open questions to be answered by other anole enthusiasts, and I would love to see more research investigating this topic.
If you found the work interesting, check our article: Maternal nest-site choice in response to saline substrates differs between island and inland populations of lizards
Green anoles (Anolis carolinensis), also described as the American chameleon, can change between brown and green coloration at will in a process known as physiological color change. Deciphering the adaptive purpose of this ability has captured scientists for over a century, with three major hypotheses dominating research: camouflage, social signaling, and thermoregulation. Social signaling is the most well-supported explanation in recent literature, while camouflage has lacked evidence. However, thermoregulation has remained contentious, as older studies show strong support for the hypothesis while newer studies show weak or no support. Seeing this disconnect, my coauthors (Robert Guralnick, Coleman Sheehy III, and Jacob Idec) and I attempted to evaluate these three hypotheses through a novel method to provide fresh insights into what drives color change in Anolis carolinensis.
In our recent paper, we harness over 10,000 images from iNaturalist and recent advances in computer vision technology to evaluate the support for each of these hypotheses at a large scale. To determine the color of the anole in each observation, we utilized Meta’s new SegmentAnything Model (SAM) to generate segments of the anole in the image, filtered out poor segments, and then used a simple equation to determine whether the anole was presenting green or brown. Then, by using the metadata attached to community science posts, we were able to retrieve the exact date-time and estimate the temperature at the moment of image capture. Using these data, we found a strong correlation between the proportion of anoles observed as brown and lower temperatures. Interestingly, during the summer breeding season, this correlation completely disappeared. Additionally, the difference in proportions of green and brown presentation throughout the year was strongly linked to latitude. These observations combined provide evidence for both the thermoregulatory hypothesis and the social signaling hypothesis, which suggests multiple adaptive drivers of color change in this species.
Although big-data observational studies such as this are insufficient to prove the ultimate cause of physiological color change in green anoles, we believe that this paper can serve as a guide for future research that takes time of year and location into account when testing these hypotheses. Furthermore, this research shows that community science has immense potential in big-data studies, especially when working in tandem with artificial intelligence systems such as computer vision. Therefore, we must thank all of the spectacular citizen scientists on iNaturalist to thank for this amazing project, and we hope that more scientists take advantage of the breadth of data available from our communities.
If you would like to read the entirety of this paper, it can be read for free at this link: https://rdcu.be/eMrgE
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Over the past several years, semi-aquatic anoles experienced a bit of viral fame for "scuba diving,” a nickname for their ability to rebreathe a bubble of air over their nostrils while diving underwater. Rebreathing allows anoles to remain underwater for a long time and theoretically escape their terrestrial or aerial predators. My collaborators and I have clocked rebreathing semi-aquatic anole dive times of about 20 minutes, though — who knows – it may even be longer! Chris Boccia and Luke Mahler led a collaborative study a few years ago in which we found that these rebreathed bubbles do decrease in oxygen over a dive, which tipped us off that anoles are actually using bubbles in respiration.
Water anole (Anolis aquaticus) rebreathing a bubble of air. Photo by: L. Swierk
But aside from being just a mind-boggling behavior to watch and a nerdy party factoid, the existence and function of rebreathing immediately hatches dozens of ecological, evolutionary, and physiological questions. One of the most fun and puzzling of these is: how are anoles actually able to stay underwater so long just by using the oxygen in their old, exhaled breath? We were puzzled by this too since, despite the relatively low oxygen demand expected of a lizard in cool stream water, we already knew that there was something funny going on with oxygen availability in these rebreathed bubbles toward the ends of dives. Instead of decreasing linearly like you would expect, the oxygen decrease in bubbles actually slowed over time. Could this mean that – when oxygen was needed most — the rebreathed bubbles were picking up oxygen from the water surrounding them?
That air-breathing animals extract oxygen from water via bubbles is certainly not a new idea. There is solid evidence of so-called "physical gills" in many air-breathing invertebrate species, including beetles, water bugs, spiders, and even scorpions! These species maintain bubbles on or near their bodies, and they get enough oxygen from the diffusion of dissolved oxygen from the water into their air bubbles to respire and remain underwater for long durations (sometimes indefinitely!).
Given the relatively small size of these invertebrates, versus the larger sizes and greater oxygen demands of semi-aquatic anoles, we thought it extremely unlikely anoles would be able to entirely rely on physical gills for indefinite respiration. But... perhaps oxygen diffusing into their bubbles could at least extend their dives? Even only a small increase in dive time could offer a benefit when it comes to predator avoidance.
My then-PhD student, Dr. Alexandra Martin, an NSF REU student, Diane Cordero-De La Cruz, and I decided to design an experiment to begin to test this idea, using our lab’s favorite (don’t tell!) semi-aquatic anole: Anolis aquaticus. In controlled lab conditions, we altered the levels of dissolved oxygen in tanks, predicting that if lizards were able to use their bubbles as physical gills then they would be able to stay submerged longest in the most highly oxygenated tanks. We were surprised and intrigued to find exactly this – A. aquaticus dive durations increased significantly when dissolved oxygen in the water was highest, and dives were shortest when dissolved oxygen was lowest. Anoles also rebreathed fewer bubbles as dissolved oxygen increased. These patterns suggest that rebreathing bubbles may be more than just an oxygen “tank”... bubbles may also be functioning as a physical gill, replenishing the air bubble with oxygen from the surrounding water. Use of a physical gill would be a first for any known air-breathing vertebrate.
Dive duration and numbers of rebreathed bubbles (shown as estimated marginal means; EMM) of water anoles diving in low, medium, and high dissolved oxygen (DO) tanks. Figure from Martin et al. 2025, Journal of Experimental Biology
There are many next steps to confirm the mechanism and adaptive function of our results, one of which is to directly measure oxygen diffusion into the bubble. But we are fascinated by the story that these findings are beginning to tell: that anoles may be pushing the envelope of vertebrate respiration in ways we’re only beginning to appreciate. As always, anoles find a way.
You can read more about our findings in our new paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology: "High dissolved oxygen extends dive duration and suggests physical gill use in a vertebrate."
Water anole perched on a streamside boulder. Photo by L. Swierk
photo from San Angelo Standard-Times
Galveston reader A.J. Watkins writes in:
I am in Galveston Texas, and I am literally in tears. Being a Port city, we have been invaded by the Cuban anoles that have obviously come in off the shipping boats. All I can say is they have caused complete devastation to SO MANY native species here on the island. Where once I had assassin bugs calore in my yard, as I never use pesticides, I also hardly ever had any issues with plant pest bugs, as the assassin bugs ( I called them my garden army) would take care of the aphids, white flies, mealy bugs, etc.
Now, since the invasion ( and I do mean INVASION) of the Cuban brown anoles, they have decimated the assassin bug population. I haven’t seen a single assassin bug for at least 3 years now. They also eat all the Pipevine Swallowtail Caterpillars, the Monarch caterpillars, and the Giant Swallowtail Caterpillars. They do kill and eat all the baby green anoles, the green anole eggs, and will outcompetes and fight with the larger Green anole males. As of this year, my back yard is over run with Cuban anoles, and I am talking HUNDREDS of them.
I try to keep the Cuban anoles away from my front porch area, as I did have 3 green anoles that hung out on the plants on my front porch. That was earlier this summer. Since then, I had one baby green anole hatch out, but then disappeared ( she was SO TINY) I am assuming she got eaten by a Cuban anole. In the past couple of weeks, the one large green anole male I had, has disappeared, as well as the adult female I had hanging out up here on my porch too.
Yes, the brown (aka, festive) anole is at it again. Now it’s turned up on the island of Bioko in the Gulf of Guinea. As Malanza et al. report in Herpetological Notes, this is the second introduction of the species to Africa, the first occurring in Angola.
Yellow Anolis carolinensis. Photo by Gary Dick.
Reader Gary Dick tells us: I encountered the hatchling pictured about 10 years ago on my patio. Part of a small population in my specific area. Best I can tell, it was achromic Green anole. What do you think?
Photo by Gary Dick.
photo by Gary Dick
Photo by Christopher Brown in Field Notes.
Christopher Brown on his blog Field Notes writes:
“We may never acquire the gift evidenced by this anole I saw on our retaining wall last weekend: the ability to regenerate large portions of one’s own body after an accident or an encounter with a predator.
I was grilling dinner when I saw it, and had to raise my glass in admiration. Long live the new flesh. May your descendants grow large, and lord over the rewilded ruins we leave behind.”
I’ve seen anoles like this before. Is skin regeneration the explanation?
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