North American Green Anole: Green-Brown Body, Round Tail, Wedged Snout

Summary: Grassy, woody North American green anole habitats get four-legged, 20-clawed, wedge-snouted green-brown bodies with gray-white-pink-gray dewlaps.

male green anole (Anolis carolinensis), also known as American green anole or Carolina anole; Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, Collier County, southwestern Florida; Feb. 29, 2008: Euku, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

North American green anole habitats appear in distribution ranges, far wider than their five, Florida-only introduced relatives, from Virginia through the Florida Keys, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina and everywhere in-between.

Green anoles bear their common name for body color and for anole membership in the Iguanidae family of iguanid lizards of America, Fiji, Madagascar and Tonga. The species Anolis carolinensis carries the subspecies names Anolis carolinensis carolinensis and Anolis carolinensis seminolus for South Carolina specimen standards and for Seminole culture-influenced Florida-only biogeographies. Descriptions in 1832 by Friedrich Siegmund Voigt (Oct. 1, 1781-Dec. 10, 1850) and in 1991 by Thomas Lynn Vance respectively decide extra-Florida and intra-Florida subspecies designations.

Green anole life cycles expect piedmont and plain climber vines, palm fronds, shrubs, tall grasses, tree boles and vertical surfaces in brushy clearings and moist forests.

March through September fit green anole life cycles into bark, brown, crested, knight and large-headed anole-like spring through fall, spring through summer and summer breeding seasons.

Adults get brown makeovers when they go basking with juveniles on sunny branches, posts, trunks and walls and green reversions back on arboreal, higher, shaded perches. They hear through external ear openings even though they have distance vision-based behavior-signaling, color-changing communication systems and territorial defenses of chest-inflating, head-bobbing, push-ups, tail-cutting and throat-extending. Territorial defenses involve such behavioral signals as strong jaws clamping sharp teeth onto long tongues and such color changes as green faces black-patching between the eyes.

Agro-industrialists, breeders, collectors, polluters and predatory brown anoles, brown tree snakes, curly-tailed lizards, kestrels, lizard cuckoos, pearly-eyed thrashers and tarantulas jeopardize North American green anole habitats.

Green anoles know brief courtships and internal fertilizations of oval eggs that females keep laying at rates of one every 14 days from April through September.

Mothers-to-be lace themselves around calcium carbonate-shelled, 0.49-inch (12.5-millimeter) by 0.37-inch (9.3-millimeter) eggs even though incubation lasts five to seven weeks in leaf-littered soil or rotting wood. Eggs maintain oxygen-permeable chlorion coverings around gas-exchanging, waste-removing allantois membranes around yolk sacs whose umbilical cord blood vessels move nutrients through liquid-membraned amniotic sacs into embryos. Ambushed, arboreal, crawling, day-active, flying, stalked, terrestrial ants, beetles, centipedes, cockroaches, crickets, flies, gnats, grasshoppers, millipedes, mosquitoes, moths, slugs, snails, spiders, termites and weevils nourish adults.

North American green anole habitats offer season's coldest temperature ranges, northward to southward, from 5 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 to minus 1.11 degrees Celsius).

Two- to 2.6-inch (50.8- to 66.04-millimeter), 0.01-ounce (0.27-gram) hatchlings prefer daytime, humid temperatures above 75 degrees Fahrenheit (23.88 degrees Celsius) during 6- to 8-month physical maturations.

Four to 8 inches (10.16 to 20.3 centimeters) and 0.07 to 0.21 ounces (2 to 3 grams) respectively queue up as mature total lengths and weights. Adults reveal gray-white-pink-red dewlaps (neck-throat folds), jaw ledge-attached teeth, long, wedge-shaped snouts, movable lower and upper eyelids, round-tailed, scaly-skinned green-brown bodies and four five-clawed, five-padded legs. Dual mobile eyelids, shape-shifting crystalline lenses and two cornea-moisturizing glands and vibration-sensitive external openings, tympanic membranes and tympanic cavity-sheltered stirrup-shaped stapes respectively scan sights and sounds.

Grassy, woody southeastern North American green anole habitats turn up dry, four-legged, green-brown, long-, wedge-snouted, round-tailed, scaly-skinned bodies with gray-white-pink-red dewlaps and 20 clawed, padded toes.

Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis), under synonym Anolius carolinensis; depiction by Italian-born scientific illustrator J. Sera, lithograph by George Lehman/Lehman & Duval Lithographers; J.E. Holbrook's North American Herpetology (1836), vol. I, Plate VII, opposite page 67: Public Domain via Biodiversity Heritage Library

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

male green anole (Anolis carolinensis), also known as American green anole or Carolina anole; Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, Collier County, southwestern Florida; Feb. 29, 2008: Euku, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Male_Anolis_carolinensis.jpg

pickerel frog (Lithobates palustris) under synonym Rana palustris; depiction by Italian-born scientific illustrator J. Sera, lithograph by George Lehman/Lehman & Duval Lithographers; J.E. Holbrook's North American Herpetology (1836), vol. I, Plate VII, opposite page 67: Public Domain via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/35765084

For further information:

Catesby, Mark. 1743. "Lacertus Viridus Carolinensis. The Green Lizard of Carolina." The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands: Containing the Figures of Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, Insects, and Plants: Particularly the Forest-Trees, Shrubs, and Other Plants, Not Hitherto Described, or Very Incorrectly Figured by Authors. Vol. II: 65-66; T. 65. London, England: Author, MDCCXLIII.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/13414323
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40680293

Cuvier, Georges, Baron; and F.S. (Friedrich Siegmund) Voigt. 1832. "6. A. carolinensis." In Baron von Cuvier's Das Thierreich, Geordnet Nach Seiner Organisation: als Grundlage der Naturgeschichte der Thiere und Einleitung in die Vergleichende Anatomie. Zweiter Band (die Reptilien und Fische enthaltend): 71. Leipzig, Germany: F.A. Brockhaus, 1832.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/19004690

Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 7, Reptiles, edited by Michael Hutchins, James B. Murphy, and Neil Schlager. Farmington Hills MI: Gale Group, 2003.

Holbrook, John Edwards. 1836. "Anolius Carolinensis. -- Cuvier. Plate VII." North American Herpetology; Or, A Description of the Reptiles Inhabiting the United States. Vol. I: 67-70; Plate VII. Philadelphia PA: J. Dobson.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/35765084

Uetz, Peter. "Anolis carolinensis Voigt, 1832." Reptile Database.
Available @ http://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/species?genus=Anolis&species=carolinensis&search_param=%28%28search%3D%27anolis+carolinensis%27%29%29