B R E V I O R A I' r r s i 1 Museiim of Comparative Zoology us ISSN 0006-9698 f -" A R^/ ^ P "^ Cambridge, Mass. 2 February 1994 Number 499 AN ECOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE ENDEMIC HISPANIOLAN ANOLINE LIZARD, CHAMAELINOROPS BARBOURI (LACERTILIA: IGUANIDAE) Glenn Flores' -, John H. Lenzycki, AND Joseph Palumbo, Jr. Abstract. We studied the ecology and behavior of Chamaelinorops barbouri at two sites. C. barbouri has very specific habitat requirements: montane ravines with abundant leaf litter, well-shaded by intact forest canopy. It is an almost exclusively terrestrial lizard, preferring leaf litter in deep shade. Despite its non-basking, shade-loving habits, C. barbouri maintains its body temperature well above air temperature, and linear regression of body temperature and air tem-perature data yield a fairly low regression coefficient; this finding is surprising in comparison to the thermal biology of other forest-dwelling, non-basking anoles, and Greater Antillean anoles in general. We found Chamaelinorops barbouri to be cryptic, sedentary, and elusive, and thus difficult to study behaviorally. It is highly specialized ecologically, morphologically, and behaviorally for life in the leaf litter, much more so than any other anole. INTRODUCTION Since its discovery in 1 9 1 9 by K. P. Schmidt, the anohne hzard Chamaelinorops barbouri has remained in animal of enigma. Over half a century passed from the time of Schmidt's (1919) descrip-tion before the systematics and distribution of this endemic His-paniolan anoline were worked out satisfactorily, and yet the pre-cise type locality is still not known and probably never will be. This lizard has a unique vertebral column, not duplicated by any other vertebrate, of which the functional significance (if any) is still completely unknown (Forsgaard, 1983). Equally mystifying ' Present Address: Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, Yale Uni-versity School of Medicine, IE-61 SHM, P.O. Box 3333, New Haven, Connecticut 06510-8025. -To whom reprint requests should be addressed.
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