For residents of one part of Orange County where invasive panther chameleons have also made themselves a home, the problem isn’t the lizards themselves. It’s the lizard collectors: the people who prowl the neighborhoods at night, shining flashlights into trees in search of the reptiles.
The finding comes from an interdisciplinary study recently published by researchers at the University of Florida, including co-author Diane Sturgeon, a postdoctoral researcher with UF’s Invasion Science Research Institute launched in 2023. The study’s goal was to understand how the presence of the panther chameleons might be affecting residents.
“We found that individuals in the community weren’t actually bothered, or didn’t have negative sentiments towards these chameleons. In fact, a few individuals had positive sentiments,” Sturgeon said…