THE CROAKING NIGHTMARE, IS IT YOURS?

INTRODUCTION

The Jamaican Croaking Lizard or "Croco 
Lizad" in the Jamaican dialect, is a well 
known nocturnal reptile in Jamaica and 
lives in most domestic areas such as 
cracks, crevices, holes and tight spaces 
found in houses, walls, zinc roofs, etc. This can become a major conflict as most persons, to my knowledge and experience, mostly females are terrified of these lizards and they respond to threat by running or by rapid movements across ceilings and walls and behind furniture. Some species are killed by the use of pesticides and other insect sprays and repellents. There are two species of Croaking Lizards found in Jamaica, (A. praesignis) and A. p. praesignis (found on Bogue Island., Morant Cays, Pedro Cays; Cayman Island.)

DESCRIPTION AND DIFFERENCES IN COLORATION

There is not much difference in the coloration of individual Croaking Lizards that were observed and studied, however, I have observed some species with a darker tone of brown, rougher looking skin and more spots and skin patterns.

BEHAVIOR PATTERNS

FORAGING PATTERNS

As mentioned before, these creatures are nocturnal and therefore, forage at nights close to a light source. Previous observations have shown that small and medium sized moths, flying insects and bugs fly and move around a light bulb shown in the picture below; and so these croaking lizards are drawn to this spot each night to forage. The Croaking Lizard forage mostly in groups of Con-specifics (lizards of the same species) and sometimes by itself. They forage regardless of how close humans are and the picture above, including the ones below,  were taken of Croaking Lizards foraging at my kitchen doorway every night. People walk by every now then and are not bothered and neither are they. However, since I began studying these creatures I realized that they don't spend a lot of time foraging in these areas as they would normally do in recent times, and I started to wonder why? But then I also observed that there are little or no small insects or moths flying around the light bulb as in recent times as well. Hence my research on the Jamaica Croaking Lizard was to determine why these lizards were putting out less appearance now than in recent times and why there are less prey attracted to the light source as there would normally be. 


My hypothesis is that the energy budget (the amount of energy a lizard puts into a particular activity) of the croaking lizards are very low and the time they spend foraging is very minimal because of the low quality patch (prey sites) or none at all currently in the area. 

During field study, I noticed that a Hetero-specific (lizard of a different species), a male Brown Anole was foraging at the same spot and went into hiding. After a long absence of prey, at one point, a few small, flying insects came about and the male Brown Anole sticks its head out of hiding and attempted to go after these insects. However, he was not successful. This behavior portrayed by the male Brown Anole matched my hypothesis, as it used very energy when there were no prey and remained inactive and in hiding, but showed an increase in energy used for feeding when one or a few moths and insects fly or come by its reach.  

Therefore, it was concluded that, since the male Brown Anole is from the same class as the Croaking lizards, Reptilia, the Croaking Lizards respond in like manner or portray a similar behavior pattern.
 

Croaking Lizards hide here at night

Hiding place during the day and during the night

Though a conclusion was drawn from this research, another question arose. It is a known fact that bugs, moths and small insects are attracted to lights, be it a light bulb, flash light or even your phone light, but why was it that in carrying out this research there were very few insects, moths and bugs flying around the light bulb even though it remained on for most of the time of the field study? The research did not produce an answer to this question, but based on my analysis and understanding, I speculate that a specific environmental condition such as time of the year or temperature might have been a factor.

It takes some patience as these lizards can remain static over long periods of time without doing any form of significant activities, especially when the study area isn't one of very high quality. 

See the following PDFs below for the estimated energy budget and the foraging behavior patterns:
Field notes EEB
Field notes FBP