Brown Anole

About the Brown Anole

The brown anole (Anolis sagrei), also known commonly as the Bahaman anole, Cuban brown anole, and de la Sagra's anole, is a species of lizard in the family Anolidae. The species is native to Cuba, the Bahamas, Little Cayman, Cayman Brac, Jamaica, the Swan Islands, the Yucatán Peninsula, Belize, and the Caribbean coast of Guatemala and Honduras. It has been widely introduced elsewhere, via the importation and exportation of plants in pots in which brown anoles laid eggs in the soil, and is now found in Florida and other regions of the United States including southern Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Hawaii, North Carolina, and Southern California. It has also been introduced to other Caribbean islands, Mexico, Singapore, and Taiwan.

This species is highly invasive. It is also much more wary of humans than most other anole species. In its introduced range, it reaches exceptionally high population densities, is capable of expanding its range very quickly, and both outcompetes and consumes many species of native lizards, like the green anole. The brown anole's introduction into the United States in the early 1970s has altered the behavior and negatively affected populations of the native Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis, also known as the green anole), which has since generally been relegated to the treetops. Wikipedia →