My yard in Ft. Myers, FL, was well-populated with Green Anoles, Anolis carolinensis. Although most males that I saw had dewlaps of bright pinkish red, dewlaps that I then referred to as “normal” a small percentage had dewlaps of greenish-white, gray, grayish green, or (I suspected) when a normal and a gray interbred the dewlap would be pale pink broadly edged with gray or white.



But if the dewlap wasn’t normal then the lizards were referred to as “abnormals.” But truthfully, I never thought too much about the dewlap color. I just enjoyed the lizards for what they were.

Then in 1991 the unthinkable happened. In the Bulletin of the Maryland Herpetological Society, Thomas Vance elevated these gray throats to subspecies status and dubbed them Anolis carolinensis seminolus.

I was perplexed by this listing then and remain so today, for as I understood the subspecies concept (and I am a believer in subspecies), two subspecies could not populate the self same niche, and to qualify as a subspecies 75 percent of a population must display the stated characteristics.