Ground Anole
Anolis (Norops) humilis
Natural History:
The ground anole is relatively small for an anole and spends much of its time on the forest floor. On the floor, the Ground Anole forages for small insects and has adapted a brown colouration to blend in with its surroundings. This colouration is also complete with different shades of brown to try and break up the lizard shape allowing it to better hide from predators.
For a vertebrate animal the ground anole has a rather short lifespan of two years. One would expect this short life span to restrict the amount of young that a female can have. They combat this problem with females being able to lay one egg every week or so. This maximizes the chances of one young surviving and spreading its genes and allows for large amounts to become predated without negatively harming the population size.
This species is that they have a tube like protrusion under their armpit, the function is not yet known though it is often filled with mites. The individual pictured had little to no fear of humans once caught, he was more curious then anything and even had a hard time going back into the forest afterwards. This shows how in some areas the animals (herptiles included) have very little fear if any of humans partly due to the short life span which would limit the amount of interactions an individual would have with humans.
In the 1980s it was suggested that anoles in the genus; Anolis should be separated into five new genera such as the genus Norops. This change in nomenclature is not widely used due to the large amount of uncertainty about the relatedness of different species within Anolis. The use of the genus Norops is not commonly used outside of Central America although it is still widely used within Costa Rica when describing native species.
The ground anole is relatively small for an anole and spends much of its time on the forest floor. On the floor, the Ground Anole forages for small insects and has adapted a brown colouration to blend in with its surroundings. This colouration is also complete with different shades of brown to try and break up the lizard shape allowing it to better hide from predators.
For a vertebrate animal the ground anole has a rather short lifespan of two years. One would expect this short life span to restrict the amount of young that a female can have. They combat this problem with females being able to lay one egg every week or so. This maximizes the chances of one young surviving and spreading its genes and allows for large amounts to become predated without negatively harming the population size.
This species is that they have a tube like protrusion under their armpit, the function is not yet known though it is often filled with mites. The individual pictured had little to no fear of humans once caught, he was more curious then anything and even had a hard time going back into the forest afterwards. This shows how in some areas the animals (herptiles included) have very little fear if any of humans partly due to the short life span which would limit the amount of interactions an individual would have with humans.
In the 1980s it was suggested that anoles in the genus; Anolis should be separated into five new genera such as the genus Norops. This change in nomenclature is not widely used due to the large amount of uncertainty about the relatedness of different species within Anolis. The use of the genus Norops is not commonly used outside of Central America although it is still widely used within Costa Rica when describing native species.