It’s Not Easy Being Green: Behavior, Morphology, and Population Structure in Urban and Natural Populations of Green Anole (Anolis carolinensis) Lizards

Abstract

Selection on behavior, signaling, and morphology can be strongly affected by variation in habitat type. Consequently, populations inhabiting different environments can exhibit divergent phenotypes as a result of either habitat-specific selection or plasticity. Urban habitats in particular represent different challenges for organisms adapted for rural environments, including disparate complements of predators and competitors, resource availability, and habitat complexity. In this paper, I review work aimed at understanding the different selective challenges experienced by rural and urban populations of green anole lizards, primarily those in southeastern Louisiana. I also describe a long-term mark-recapture experiment on an urban population of green anoles in New Orleans, and consider how sex ratios and population density changes over time. Collectively, this work shows that urban and rural populations of green anoles diverge markedly in behavior and morphology driven both by differences in habitat and the presence of competitors in the urban environment; however, it also shows that the effects of urbanization on the ecology and evolution of green anoles are understudied.

Size but not relatedness drives the spatial distribution of males within an urban population of Anolis carolinensis lizards

“…The reason for the differences in home ranging between the Washington Square Park population and other populations is unclear. It could be driven by differences in the type and quality of habitat, which can be substantial (e.g., [Edwards & Lailvaux, 2012; Irschick et al., 2005]) or by general differences between the urban nature of the Washington Square Park population and the rural populations studied by Jenssen and others (Lailvaux, 2020).…”

Do Suburban Populations of Lizards Behave Differently from Forest Ones? An Analysis of Perch Height, Time Budget, and Display Rate in the Cuban Endemic Anolis homolechis

“…Comparisons between urban and non-urban populations of anole species have provided evidence for differences in morphology [57][58][59][60][61], reproductive traits [57], and population structure [60,62]. Differences between urban and non-urban populations of anoles have also been reported for territorial and sexual behavior [31,37,63,64], locomotor performance [37,65], foraging behavior [66], and substrate choice [67,68].…”