Local form Nosy Be

Distribution of the local form Nosy Be:

The island of Nosy Be (which simply means ‘big island’) is located in the north-west of Madagascar in the Diana region. It covers an area of around 312 km² and has a population of over 45,000, most of whom live in the island’s largest town, Andoany (known as Hellville in French), and make their living from fishing and tourism. Nosy Be is probably Madagascar’s best-known holiday resort. It is particularly popular with Italian tourists. Nosy Be has a small national park called Lokobe, which covers only 7.4 km² of the island, and a smaller municipal reserve of the same name. Otherwise, Nosy Be lives mainly from its many beautiful beaches. The rest of the island consists mainly of secondary vegetation and countless ylang-ylang plantations. The islands of Nosy Komba, Nosy Faly and Nosy Tanikely are also within easy reach. Nosy Be can be reached by plane via Fascene Airport or by sea from Ankify.

Appearance of the local form:

Due to its complete isolation in the Channel of Mozambique, this island has developed a local form of panther chameleons with high color fidelity. Males are turquoise-greenish or -blueish with blue stripes and red dots. The corner of the mouth is always yellow and the eyelids have red rays. Despite they all look very similar to each other, there are small variations among the panther chameleons here, for example, there are almost completely turquoise blue colored specimens without any stripes.

Weight table

Gewichtstabelle Furcifer pardalis 2018

Gewicht = weight in grams, Kopf-Rumpf-Länge = snout-vent-length in cm, Weibchen = females, Männchen = males

Since 2015, we have been measuring the weights of chameleons found by us in Madagascar, as far as the animals (and our scales) participate. In the long term, we aim to obtain an average weight in relation to snout-vent-length (measured from the tip of the nose to the cloaca) for each species from as many measurements as possible. It is important to know that all weights were measured towards the end of the rainy season (= best food supply), so these should be maximum weights on Madagascar. Triangular symbols in females mean not pregnant, round symbols mean pregnant. In Furcifer pardalis, contrary to our original assumption, it has so far turned out that there are no serious differences in the ratio of SVL to weight between the individual local forms.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Average temperature	27	27	27	26	25	24	24	25	25	26	27	27
Minimum temperature	23	23	24	23	22	20	20	19	20	22	23	23
Maximum Ttemperature	31	31	31	31	31	29	29	29	30	31	31	31
Rain days	21	19	17	12	8	8	8	8	7	8	11	17

We have collected the data given above over several years with thermometers and hygrometers at the finding places of the chameleons. "Average temperature" means that values of a whole month have been calculated to one average value per month. For example all measured minimum temperature values of February have been calculated to one average minimum temperature for February. In plain language, this means single peak values of a day may be a little higher or lower than the average minimum and maximum temperatures. It is possible that a location has an average maximum temperature of 29°C, but one day during that month it had 33°C or even 35°C there.

Climate on the islands in front of Madagascar's north west coast is very warm all year long. Temperatures over 30°C are usual. In the night, temperatures hardly drop below 25°C, during rainy season they may drop much lower until 19°C.

During the rainy season, rainfall is very heavy and frequent. From April to October, the islands remain largely dry and sunny, with hardly any rain towards the end of the dry season. This can lead to extremely dry conditions. However, in many years there are frequent light showers, especially at the beginning of the dry season.

The UVB data was measured in October 2025 (upper graph) and in spring (early April) using a Solarmeter 6.5. The measurements were taken for the maximum values achievable for the chameleon in its habitat.

Unfortunately, we have no ground temperatures for Nosy Be available yet.

Habitat:

The panther chameleons of Nosy Be inhabit three different types of habitat. One is the island’s last rainforest, Lokobe National Park. It is located on a mountain that is densely covered with trees. The ground is very rocky and many small streams run through the dense rainforest. Mosses, ferns and lianas can be found everywhere. The second habitat is the Lokobe Reserve, which consists of low dry forest with many rather thin trees. And the third habitat of the panther chameleons on Nosy Be is the exact opposite of the previous two: open landscapes in the secondary vegetation of the rest of the island. Ylang-ylang plantations with their gnarled, low-cut trees, palm trees, bushes and overgrown hotel gardens – virtually everything is colonised.