Ambilobe Chameleons

The Ambilobe is a panther chameleon (Furcifer pardalis) locale, named for the wild population around the town of Ambilobe in the Diana region of northern Madagascar, close to Ambanja. It is the most widely available and most popular locale in the hobby, and its males show more colour variety than any other.

Appearance

A male Ambilobe is described by two colours: the body, and the saddle-shaped bars across the flanks. The bars are red or blue, and the body runs orange, red, yellow or green. Green-bodied males with red bars turn up too. Keepers use the pairing as shorthand, YBBB for a yellow body with blue bars and RBBB for a red body with blue bars, and the animals are sold under two broad names, blue bar and red bar.

The range is wide even within the locale. Siblings from one clutch can colour up differently, so a baby is a promise rather than a finished animal.

Hatchlings of both sexes are greyish brown with a faint pattern. Females look the same whichever locale they come from and stay peach, salmon, tan-brown or pink for life. Males start to show colour at around four to six months and keep changing past their first birthday.

Genetics

A locale is a provenance, so there is no het, no super and nothing to prove out. Animals from the neighbouring town of Sirama count as the same locale. The names match real genetic differences: a 2015 study in Molecular Ecology by Grbic and colleagues found strong genetic structure between panther chameleon populations, and male colour pattern predicted which lineage an animal belonged to.

The hobby got Ambilobes in the early 2000s. Breeders keep locales apart, and crossing them is contentious. You cannot tell a female's locale by eye. Ask to see both parents and the line behind them before you buy.