This week one morning as I campfired my breakfast into existence the brownish, lizardy entity came working along the wall again, preying on invertebrates too small for me to see. I happened to have the camera handy so you can see who it was, illuminated by the camera's flash and with outside greenery showing through the crack in the wall at the right, in the above picture..

Once again nothing like this was pictured in Campbell's book, so, having just seen how handily James in Washington State identifies Yucatán's reptiles, I shipped the picture off to him and the very next day this verdict came back: female Brown Anole, ANOLIS SAGREI MAYENSIS. Campbell's book does picture a very dissimilar-looking male of this species, but Campbell calls it the Mayan Coastal Anole, Norops sagrei, which I assume is an older name. Once again it takes "reading the fine print" in Campbell's book before learning that the female has blotchy sides and a "pale tan or yellowish dorsal stripe" running down the back.

So this is a fine observation, especially because Campbell regards the species as not commonly found far from the coast, though he makes special mention of a population here at Chichén Itzá. I like to imagine that long ago someone, maybe a Maya citizen on pilgrimage to Chichén Itzá, brought from the coast a pet Brown Anole and let it go so that today we have this isolated population. But that's fantasizing. Natural processes could just as easily explain it. The species is distributed from southern Florida and the Caribbean south along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts to Costa Rica.

from the May 2, 2010 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO
ANOLE ANALYSIS
Last week I showed you the female Brown Anole, ANOLIS SAGREI MAYENSIS, shown above. This week I was looking for the male, so when a dark anole came working along my pole wall not showing the female's white dorsal stripe I figured I had him. That's him below:

However, once I got the picture on my laptop's screen, his patterning turned out to be more like that of the closely related Bourgeau's Anole, though really it wasn't a good match for any of the pictures in Campbell's Amphibians and Reptiles of Northern Guatemala, the Yucatán, and Belize. I sent the picture off to James in Washington State, who helped with my last reptile riddle, and he replied that he couldn't be sure, either.

However, James noted that both species are very variable, and that the Bourgeau's Anole is more of a forest dweller, while Brown Anoles are "quite happy in a human-altered landscape, to the point that it is a human commensal in many places." Also, he said that Brown Anoles should show something of a ridge, or "keel," running down the top of the tail, while Bourgeau's Anoles don't have that.

Well, in the above picture, if you stare long enough at the end third of the creature's tail, you'll begin seeing a thin, pale line running down the middle, that well could be a "keel."

So, after all, probably this is the male Brown Anole, but I just can't be sure.