Lizards of Miami · Introduced from Hispaniola
Bark anole (Anolis distichus)
The smallest anole in Miami, and the one you are most likely to see only out of the corner of your eye.
Anolis distichus
At a glance
- Scientific name
- Anolis distichus
- Native to
- Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic)
- Size
- No more than 5 cm (2 in) snout to vent; males and females about the same size
- Dewlap
- White to yellow in males, sometimes with an orange spot
- Where to look
- On wide tree trunks, 1 to 3 m above the ground
Bark anoles come from Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and in Miami they specialize on one thing: wide tree trunks. Where most anoles perch on narrower branches, bark anoles press themselves flat against broad bark between one and three meters up, which gives them their slightly splayed look.
They are the smallest anoles in Miami, no longer than about 5 cm from snout to vent, and very fast. Walk up to a tree and a bark anole will dash to the far side of the trunk before you get a good look, a habit field biologists call “squirreling.” Their favorite food is ants.
Life on the trunk
On Lizard Island, our long-term study site in Miami, the bark anole is the community's trunk specialist, living between the ground-dwelling brown and crested anoles below and the green and knight anoles in the canopy above. Being in the middle has a cost. Knight anoles eat other lizards, and in August 2013 we watched an adult female knight anole on the Florida International University campus swallow a juvenile bark anole in under a minute.
Bark anoles were also one of six species whose cold tolerance shifted after south Florida's extreme cold snap in January 2020; see our cold snaps page.
How to tell it apart
- Grey to yellowish brown, sometimes greenish, speckled with light and dark flecks of varying size.
- A dark bar across the top of the head between the eyes, and a pale ring around each eye.
- A tail usually banded yellow and black toward the tip.
- Perches higher than brown and crested anoles, flattened against broad trunks with a splayed look.
- Very fast. It will slip around to the far side of the trunk as soon as you look at it.
Our research on the bark anole
- Anolis equestris (Cuban knight anole): Exotic intra-guild predation. Herpetological Review (2013)
- Anolis equestris (Cuban knight anole): Novel predator-prey interaction. Herpetological Review (2016)
- An extreme cold event leads to community-wide convergence in lower temperature tolerance in a lizard community. Biology Letters (2020)
Identification details follow our field identification guide to the anole lizards of Miami. Spotted one? Photograph it and add it to iNaturalist.