Colin Donihue

Dr. James “Skip” Lazell Jr. was the first to formally describe Anolis nubilus in a 1972 publication from the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. Above are two of his drawings of the species from the publication. He’s a colorful and evocative writer so I’m going to let his description of his 1964 trek to find the species and his subsequent notes on their ecology stand on their own.

From “The Anoles (Sauria, Iguanidae) of the Lesser Antilles” Volume 143, No.1. 1972.

Distribution. Anolis nubilus occurs only on Redonda. This tiny islet is exceedingly steep-to, and rises nearly 1000 feet out of the sea. There is virtually no surrounding bank, and the full swell of the western North Atlantic pounds Redonda’s cliffs. A tiny, nearly vertical gut on the leeward side provides the only access to the top of the islet up the cliffs; great blocks of basalt lie at the foot of this gut, and one’s original entrance to Redonda is made by jumping onto these blocks as the boat goes past them. It is about like jumping from a moving elevator onto a card table, except that elevators give more notice of directional reversals…but getting on is just the beginning.

The islet is a great block of igneous extrusive: strata of basalt and the peculiarly conglomeratelike, porphyritic material so often the result of Antillean vulcanism. The top of Redonda is a rolling wold, and a favorite place of innumerable nesting sea birds; the gut provides a route for their guano to descend the cliffs, and it dries to a thick powder there. Because of its leeward location, a chimney effect is produced in the gut, and the guano dust, mixed with the volcanic sand weathered from the parent rock, tends to rise when disturbed. As one toils up the gut under the tropical sun, one is accompanied by a cloud of this dust, which soon mingles with ones’ own sweat to produce a wondrously aromatic and abrasive, though rather gluey, bath. At the top, jumbles of rocks and clumps of prickly pear rise gently to the old ruins, complete with a hedge of Bougainvillea and the single tree. This is the home of Anolis nubilus.

Population structure and ecology. Anolis nubilus is not abundant, but occurs all over Redonda. Owing to the lack of trees, it seems to dwell mostly in the shade of large rocks close to ground. In the ruins of the old building and on the one tree (a Casuarina, apparently inedible even to goats), A. nubilus climb as high as they can get: about fifteen feet. This species must compete with the large, glossy black ground lizard, Ameiva atrata, for at least some of its food. Surely Redonda once supported more vegetation and presumably Anolis nubilus then had an easier life. The feral goats should be extirpated on this remarkable island, whose only known nonflying vertebrates are species found nowhere else on earth.