Chapter 12: Communication
Anole Dewlap Display
Courtesy Terry Ord
Anoles change color as a means of regulating body temperature or as a form of visual signaling used in communicating with conspecifics. Males advertise territory ownership with repeated bobbing of their heads, along with the extension and retraction of a colorful pouch of skin known as a dewlap. These displays ultimately represent a compromise between costs associated with increased conspicuousness to predators and the benefits of effectively transmitting one’s ownership of a given territory to conspecifics. Beyond this trade-off, however, signal design and production are influenced by the medium through which the signal is broadcast. In noisy environments, signals are exaggerated, thus facilitating receiver access to signals. Both Puerto Rican crested anoles (Anolis cristatellus), shown in the video clip performing a dewlap display, and yellow-chinned anoles (Anolis gundlachi), increase the speed of body movements that they employ in dewlap displays to a degree that is commensurate with increasing visual noise caused by wind blown vegetation.
See Chapter 12 – Communication, Chapter 13 – Habitat Selection, Territoriality, and Migration.
Further reading – Ord, T.J., Peters, R.A., Clucas, B. & Stamps, J.A. (2007). Lizards speed up visual displays in noisy motion habitats. Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 274: 1057-1062.