Anolis fraseri, colloquially referred to as the “hippie anole” for its vibrant spectrum of colours, is a large species of Dactyloid lizard. The species is named after British herpetologist, Louis Fraser who was a Curator at the Zoological Society of London in the mid-nineteenth century. Fraser’s anole hails from the montane and submontane foothills of the Western Andes through North Ecuador and South Colombia. Reliant on ultra-humid cloud forests that harbour cool temperatures, it is a little-studied and rarely kept species. In fact, Adam Trimmings, a herpetologist and private breeder of reptiles in the UK is thought to be amongst only three people to have ever bred the species outside of Ecuador. In this article, Adam gives us insight into the often-under-appreciated world of anoles.
Life in the cloud forest
Many private keepers group “anoles” as a broad category of small, uninteresting tropical lizards. This is potentially due to the mass imports of green anoles (Anolis carolinensis) in the early days of herpetocuture, that gave these lizards a reputation shrouded by commodification. They were exported on mass and with limited technology available to keepers, subpar husbandry often accelerated the lizards’ perilous fates. Now, advances in herpetoculture mean that a wide spectrum of species can be kept and bred successfully by dedicated experts.
With over 425 species within the Dactyloidae family, there is extreme diversity amongst the humble “anoles”. As one of only three known breeders of fraseri, Adam Trimmings (@AdamsDragons) has learnt a lot about the hippie anole. “They’re just stunning lizards” he told Exotics Keeper Magazine. “They are the largest of the equatorial Anolis and they tend to occupy the high canopy but are often seen on fence posts too, close to human settlements. They are less abundant in the wet season, but they are pretty common in their range.”
Hippie anoles are considered Least Concern by the IUCN despite surprisingly little being known about their wild behaviours. In their home range, new species of Anolis and Dactyloa are being described quite frequently, suggesting that both wild and captive studies could be valuable to our understanding of cloud forest ecosystems.
Adam continued: “Captives are not as bright as wild ones and that’s the same with a lot of cloud forest species. Because their habitat is so niche, they have lots of fog, cool nights and hot humid days, that it is difficult to replicate that in captivity and it does seem to show in the way they look and behave. That’s not to say they’re not happy in captivity but there is something about the wild colours and markings that really stands out.”
Adam has three separate reptile rooms that are divided into climate zones. These include a “montane” room, housing alligator lizards (Abronia sp.) that can be drastically cooled in the winter, a “tropical” room housing blue tree monitors (Varanus macraei) and green tree pythons (Morelia azurea) that stays warm year-round and the Anolis room that drops in temperature at night. “Hippie anoles don’t mind the mid to high 20’s (°C) during the day, but they need that drop at night. Being from a reasonably high altitude, the nights are cool. When I bought my house, I planned a room that would allow me to house species like that. I always opt to heat the ambient temperature of a room, rather than the enclosure. You can cause thermal confusion by adding additional heat to counteract natural temperature drops.”
Being a montane species, hippie anoles are naturally exposed to major fluctuations in their environment. Evenings can be shockingly cold, while daytime temperatures can be surprisingly hot. In Mindo, Ecuador, throughout the year, temperatures can fluctuate between 14°C and exceed 25°C. The high altitude also means that the animals are exposed to high levels of UVB when they are basking in the sun. Furthermore, average rainfall can reach up to 486mm a month. Usually, mornings are hot and dry, while rain is relentless throughout the afternoons and well into the evenings driving humidity levels up and down. Adam continued: “Nature’s not perfect all the time. Animals are exposed to fluctuations and I think in captivity we’re too anal about keeping the margins fine.” He chooses to use the ambient temperatures of his home to create fluctuations in the animals’ enclosures.
Recreating the rains
Cloud forests are extremely lush environments, and the forests of Mindo in Ecuador are no exception. This region hosts hundreds of species of epiphytic plants. Adam’s enclosure utilises a wide range of these including bromeliads, tillandsia, orchids and some mosses and ferns too. Adam uses a fogger that turns on every three hours to increase the humidity. This is combined with a MistKing system that mists the enclosure three times a day (morning, noon and night) to ensure that the humidity remains extremely high. “This really helps hydrate them” adds Adam. “They will naturally breathe this water in through respiration. Anolis are a thirsty genus if their environment is too dry. I’ve noticed that they are far less thirsty by having the fogger and mister than when I would manually spray them. This gives them everything they need and takes the pressure off me too. Generally speaking, all my enclosures are self-maintaining because of how I have set them up. Other than cleaning glass, which is quite filthy simply because of the amount of water being circulated and the algae growth that comes with it, they’re quite low-maintenance animals.”
“Their dewlap is huge. It’s a bright yellow and when you see them displaying it is pretty impressive! Adams set-up utilises a 12% T5 alongside an LED bar for plant growth, a third 13W LED spot bulb and a 35W halogen basking spot (that is removed in summer). “They need LOTS of light” Adam added. “It’s quite sad because people think they’re giving their animals a lot of light and they’re not. When you look into LUX levels, especially in Ecuador, you’ve got to be almost blinding these animals to be giving them anything close to the sunlight they’re getting in the wild.”
The combination of equipment used in Adam’s setup creates basking temperatures of 28°C to 30°C with ambient temperatures of around 22°C to 24°C. By using a 12% T5 he offers a good amount of UV, whilst also giving the animals choice to move further from and closer to the lighting.
Sourcing and breeding
Adam originally acquired a young wild-caught pair from an Ecuador import around four years ago. He explained: “Unfortunately, the male began to deteriorate. Looking back, I think it was because of the temperatures I was keeping them at. Once an animal like that gets ill, it’s really hard to bring them back around again. So, I was left with the female who was doing fine. One day I walked in and saw a baby, which, I’m told, was the first captive-bred Anolis fraseri outside of Ecuador. So, she had laid an egg somewhere in the enclosure that had incubated in situ. Bear in mind, the incubation period for this species is up to 6 months, so I must have been doing something right.”
Adam soon found more eggs, which he chose not to artificially incubate and instead secure in a tub that could be easily monitored and placed back into the enclosure. “I fed the hatchling with easily-digestible foods, micro crickets and fruit flies, etc and he’s grown on to be the subadult male that I have today. He’s now paired with a female that I sourced from a friend and I’ve seen plenty of copulation between the two. Unfortunately, the female is slugging out a lot. Like many reptiles, the female will continue to lay infertile eggs. With fraseri, they lay a single egg, not a clutch. She was producing quite a lot of infertile eggs.”
Adam continued: “As I had seen a lot of copulation I thought, perhaps she just doesn’t have enough laying sites. These anoles don’t lay on the ground in soil, they will wedge eggs amongst root systems and orchids and other platforms. I thought perhaps she’s not wasting the viable sperm on eggs when she doesn’t have anywhere to lay.” To solve this issue, Adam added a few small green plant pots containing a mix of soil, vermiculite and moss to different locations around the enclosure at different levels. In doing so, he offered the female a range of microclimates of varying temperatures and humidity to lay her eggs. Eventually, the female chose to lay her egg in the highest plant pot. “A few days after adding the pots, she was in it!” Adam added.
“Some reptiles are fine being incubated at a steady temperature, but cloud forest species need a good 5°C drop even during the incubation stage. When people incubate reptiles – and I’m talking about any species here – in the mid to high 20s you almost rush it out of the egg. The incubation period is probably drastically reduced than if it’s given a slow and steady development process.”
There are numerous species from a variety of climates that benefit from controlled fluctuations in their incubation period. Parson’s Chameleon (Calumma parsonii) eggs can take up to 600 days (almost two years!) to hatch. They are the reptile with the longest incubation period and therefore, despite living in regions with relatively stable conditions, it is paramount that the breeder provides seasonality to mimic what would be happening in Madagascar over that time. Even species with very short incubation periods may experience drastic changes in temperature and humidity as weather, seasons and other environmental factors change.
“I believe there are only three of us in Europe that keep the species, as the other pairs went to two German keepers. They’re doing really well with them and have produced a lot of captive-bred animals now! They’re a tricky species to breed. Because they only lay one egg a month and go through seasonal changes where the female doesn’t lay, it could be only 8 – 10 eggs a year, so they’re a slow species to work with.
Diet
A varied diet is an important and often overlooked aspect of reptile husbandry. In the montane regions of Ecuador where the hippie anole resides, seasons bring an abundance of different species at different times of the year. The lizards have evolved to factor this into their biological makeup. “If people can take anything home it’s that variety is the spice of life” added Adam. “In certain seasons, certain prey items will be abundant. So, for example, in the summer months when there are a lot of pollinators, you can add things like bee pollen to your live food because naturally, they will receive that in the wild.”
In the cloud forests of Mindo, there are seasonal fluctuations in insects like mosquitos. Equally, small-sized arthropods and caterpillars may be more abundant at certain times of the year. This can be replicated by adding new livefoods, allowing old livefoods to metamorphose, or changing the size of the livefood.
As with any reptile, gut-loading is an extremely important aspect of providing a nutritious diet. There are a lot of pre-made formulas designed to give the feeder insects the best possible nutrition, but those that add raw fruits and veggies as extra moisture should be conscious to alternate the food sources. While a piece of cucumber may be an obvious choice for hydration, it is not very nutritionally rich and therefore, a wide mix of carotenoid-rich foods such as squash, carrot, beetroot and more, combined with different leaves and fruits can lead to a healthy spectrum of vitamins and minerals. Adam continued: “If you’ve only got 10 species available to feed to your captive, well, as long as you are giving those species a wide variety of foods, you are still providing variety to your animal” adds Adam. “I like to think of crickets like a sandwich. It’s what’s inside the sandwich that matters.”
Anole popularity
With such a wide diversity of anoles available the care and keeping of Anolis species is an area of herpetoculture that even the most dedicated herpetoculturists have barely scratched the surface of. With more and more countries holding total bans on the exportation of wildlife, opportunities to keep and breed unusual species and learn more about these fascinating lizards are naturally dwindling. Although wild-caught animals should be reserved for experienced herpetoculturists who are likely to succeed in propagating the species within captivity, captive-bred Anolis can make for some fascinating pets and share some of the desirable traits that have seen poison frogs (Dendrobatidae) rise in popularity in recent years.
Adam concluded: “I think anoles are becoming a LOT more popular now! The diversity is just insane. There are so many species and even localities of species that can be kept. With the way the energy crisis is going, they’re perfect reptiles to keep. People seem to be focusing on the smaller, quirkier species than the ones that require a lot more space, heating and lighting. They’re interesting animals to observe and have unique characters. You get to see these cool little behaviours such as the males displaying. There’s something about these anoles, they’re smart lizards!