Collected by biology students visiting Cuba, then introduced to Florida, this species has thrived!



Hearkening back a half century or so, I can remember standing at the Hialeah Racetrack with Jerry Fine in the early 1960s and wondering if we ever would see one of the (then) rather newly and deliberately introduced knight anoles.

Although they were said to be gaining a foothold in Dade County, Florida, we had failed to find one. But within a few years these big anolines became common in roadside trees in Coral Gables. Ditto at the before mentioned Racetrack locale. And they were ever more commonly seen hanging head down on the trunks of palms or ficus trees, in many (most?) urban Miami plantings.

By the 1980s, the question was whether there was any place in Miami where they couldn't be seen! Today, after finding them in thickets along the south shore of Lake Okeechobee, in Palm Beach and Collier counties, and in exotic plantings in St. John's County (where they may have been carried in the plantings and may not be established) the question has become how far north of Dade County can this 16 inch long predatory lizard establish itself? And what are its prey items?

Insects (including large beetles and roaches) and other anoles (most often the introduced brown anole) are grist for the mill of the knight anole.