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Anolis cristatellus
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Anolis cristatellus
Anolis cristatellus is a small species of anole, belonging to the Dactyloidae family of reptiles. The species is native to Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, with introduced populations in locations around the Caribbean. The males of A. cristatellus are easily recognizable by the fin running down the top of the tail, which is known as a "caudal crest". The females also have this crest, but it is smaller than that of the males. The species is often quite common in many areas on Puerto Rico, where it can be seen during the day passing the time on the lower parts of tree trunks, or on fences and the walls of buildings in urban areas, sometimes venturing down onto the ground in order to lay eggs, have a snack, or do other cursorial activities. Like many anoles, this species displays the characteristic behaviour of doing push-ups as well as inflating a pizza-like flap of coloured skin on its throat, known as a dewlap, in order to show others how dominant it is, and thus attract mates or intimidate rivals.
The species is known locally as the lagartijo común, and in English it is sometimes called the crested anole, the common Puerto Rican anole, and the Puerto Rican crested anole. There are two allopatric subspecies found in different geographical areas, with slightly different coloured dewlaps and crests.
This species was first scientifically described as Anolis cristatellus by André Marie Constant Duméril and Gabriel Bibron in 1837 using a number of specimens sent to Paris by Auguste Plée from Martinique. They also had an additional specimen supposedly from French Guiana, although these two authors doubted the veracity of this provenance, and a further female specimen found in the collection of the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle, labelled by Nicolaus Michael Oppel as Anolis porphyreus, apparently a nomen nudum. Georges Cuvier had first examined the specimens sent by Plée, and dubbed the lizard le petit Anolis a crête in the second tome of his massive work, Le Règne Animal, a few years before, stating that the taxon Anders Sparrman had called Lacerta bimaculata was a synonym of this species. Duméril and Bibron were not in agreement with this observation, however, and described Sparrman's lizard as A. leachii.
For the next century and a half the taxonomy remained stable and uncontroversial, until Craig Guyer and Jay M. Savage attempted to split the very large genus Anolis in 1986 based on skeletal, immunology and karyological datasets used together in a type of cladistics method called "successive weighted characters", thus moving most species into a new very large genus called Norops, and moving Anolis cristatellus into the genus Ctenonotus. Following Guyer and Savage, Albert Schwartz and Robert W. Henderson also classified this species as Ctenonotus cristatellus in 1988. Because this splitting caused the new remaining genera to be paraphyletic, most herpetologists chose not to follow this taxonomic interpretation, and within a decade this new nomenclature was seen as a synonym. In 2012 the same authors, together with Kirsten Nicholson and Brian Crother, again tried moving the species to their new genus, this time using more molecular data in their cladistics analysis, but did so less than convincingly. They gave it another go in 2018.
As of 2020 there are two subspecies recognised:
In 1975 the authors Schwartz and Richard Thomas reported A. cristatellus cristatellus to be the subspecies present on many of the islands east of Puerto Rico. This was corrected by Heatwole in 1976 who classified these populations as A. cristatellus wileyae. "Hybrids" between the two subspecies were first found on the main island of Puerto Rico and Isleta Marina in the late 1970s and reported by Heatwole et al. in 1981 (this islet is now covered in giant apartment buildings),[citation needed] but by 1988 it appeared that many of the populations occurring on the islands in between the two taxa were intermediate between the two taxa. Schwartz and Henderson recorded such intermediate populations on the islands of Cayo Icacos, Cayo la Llave, Cayo Palominitos (offshore of Isla Palominos) and Isla Pineros. A larger island in this area, Culebra, may also have somewhat intermediate specimens.
The syntypes for the nominate form, MNHN2353 and MNHN2447, are housed at the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle. It was stated by Duméril and Bibron in 1837 to have been sent from Martinique, but the species does not occur on this island. The Reptile Database, however, records a holotype, MCZ8306 (also catalogued as MCZ2171), being kept at the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
The subspecies wileyae has a holotype, UMMZ73648, kept at the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History along with a number of paratypes; although according to Schwartz and Henderson in 1991 the holotype is MCZ34792.
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Anolis cristatellus
Anolis cristatellus is a small species of anole, belonging to the Dactyloidae family of reptiles. The species is native to Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, with introduced populations in locations around the Caribbean. The males of A. cristatellus are easily recognizable by the fin running down the top of the tail, which is known as a "caudal crest". The females also have this crest, but it is smaller than that of the males. The species is often quite common in many areas on Puerto Rico, where it can be seen during the day passing the time on the lower parts of tree trunks, or on fences and the walls of buildings in urban areas, sometimes venturing down onto the ground in order to lay eggs, have a snack, or do other cursorial activities. Like many anoles, this species displays the characteristic behaviour of doing push-ups as well as inflating a pizza-like flap of coloured skin on its throat, known as a dewlap, in order to show others how dominant it is, and thus attract mates or intimidate rivals.
The species is known locally as the lagartijo común, and in English it is sometimes called the crested anole, the common Puerto Rican anole, and the Puerto Rican crested anole. There are two allopatric subspecies found in different geographical areas, with slightly different coloured dewlaps and crests.
This species was first scientifically described as Anolis cristatellus by André Marie Constant Duméril and Gabriel Bibron in 1837 using a number of specimens sent to Paris by Auguste Plée from Martinique. They also had an additional specimen supposedly from French Guiana, although these two authors doubted the veracity of this provenance, and a further female specimen found in the collection of the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle, labelled by Nicolaus Michael Oppel as Anolis porphyreus, apparently a nomen nudum. Georges Cuvier had first examined the specimens sent by Plée, and dubbed the lizard le petit Anolis a crête in the second tome of his massive work, Le Règne Animal, a few years before, stating that the taxon Anders Sparrman had called Lacerta bimaculata was a synonym of this species. Duméril and Bibron were not in agreement with this observation, however, and described Sparrman's lizard as A. leachii.
For the next century and a half the taxonomy remained stable and uncontroversial, until Craig Guyer and Jay M. Savage attempted to split the very large genus Anolis in 1986 based on skeletal, immunology and karyological datasets used together in a type of cladistics method called "successive weighted characters", thus moving most species into a new very large genus called Norops, and moving Anolis cristatellus into the genus Ctenonotus. Following Guyer and Savage, Albert Schwartz and Robert W. Henderson also classified this species as Ctenonotus cristatellus in 1988. Because this splitting caused the new remaining genera to be paraphyletic, most herpetologists chose not to follow this taxonomic interpretation, and within a decade this new nomenclature was seen as a synonym. In 2012 the same authors, together with Kirsten Nicholson and Brian Crother, again tried moving the species to their new genus, this time using more molecular data in their cladistics analysis, but did so less than convincingly. They gave it another go in 2018.
As of 2020 there are two subspecies recognised:
In 1975 the authors Schwartz and Richard Thomas reported A. cristatellus cristatellus to be the subspecies present on many of the islands east of Puerto Rico. This was corrected by Heatwole in 1976 who classified these populations as A. cristatellus wileyae. "Hybrids" between the two subspecies were first found on the main island of Puerto Rico and Isleta Marina in the late 1970s and reported by Heatwole et al. in 1981 (this islet is now covered in giant apartment buildings),[citation needed] but by 1988 it appeared that many of the populations occurring on the islands in between the two taxa were intermediate between the two taxa. Schwartz and Henderson recorded such intermediate populations on the islands of Cayo Icacos, Cayo la Llave, Cayo Palominitos (offshore of Isla Palominos) and Isla Pineros. A larger island in this area, Culebra, may also have somewhat intermediate specimens.
The syntypes for the nominate form, MNHN2353 and MNHN2447, are housed at the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle. It was stated by Duméril and Bibron in 1837 to have been sent from Martinique, but the species does not occur on this island. The Reptile Database, however, records a holotype, MCZ8306 (also catalogued as MCZ2171), being kept at the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
The subspecies wileyae has a holotype, UMMZ73648, kept at the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History along with a number of paratypes; although according to Schwartz and Henderson in 1991 the holotype is MCZ34792.
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