Special Saba Features

The Saban Anole

What kind of lizard is the Saban Anole??

Anoles are a group of lizards that biologists call the genus Anolis. The scientific name of "Anolis" comes from the popular name of "anole" for these lizards. Anole is an Ancient African name, meaning "little devil", that is given to small lizards in western Africa. The name was brought to the western hemisphere by African people long ago. Thus, Anolis is one of the few scientific names that comes from an African language.

There are at least 300 species of Anolis scattered throughout theCaribbean basin, as well as southern North America and Central America. The Saban anole is called Anolis sabanus and occurs only on the island of Saba. There are other species of anolis in the Lesser Antilles.

These include Anolis gingivinus on St. Maarten, Anguila and St. Barths, and Anolis bimaculatus on St. Eustatius, St. Kitts and Antigua. So, many species of anoles live on more than one island, but some of the larger islands, such as St. Lucia and Dominica have a unique species of their own. Biologists call a species that is found only in one location an "endemic species". Saba misses the honors of being the smallest island with an endemic species because the speck of land called Redonda has the unique Anolis nubilus.

Travelers to St. Kitts will notice that the anole of that island is huge compared to the Saban anole. Indeed, some species of Anolis are the size of the iguanas that we can see on Saba, and such large anoles even look much like iguanas. This gives us a hint that Anolis and the genus Iguana are closely related in an evolutionary sense. Iguanas tend to be very large lizards and eat plants, whereas anoles usually are much smaller and eat insects. The anatomy of iguanas and anoles is otherwise similar. This suggests that long ago iguanas and anoles shared a common ancestor.

If the Saba anole came to the island originally over water (perhaps by clinging onto a floating tree that had been washed into the sea), where was the home of its ancestors? Biologists who have studied anoles in the Caribbean believe that the ancestor of Anolis sabanus came from the St. Croix island region in the Virgin Islands. However, the Saban anole is quite distinct from all other anoles; this suggests that it is a very, very old species and arrived on Saba before the present-day anoles of St. Eustatius, St. Maarten and St. Kitts traveled to those islands.

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