Types of Lizards in Maui: Geckos, Skinks, Anoles, and Chameleons Explained
October 25, 2026
Not one of the lizards sunning themselves on Maui’s lava rock walls, garden hedges, or hotel lanais actually belongs there. Hawai’i has no native lizards, and every species now living on the island arrived by canoe, cargo ship, or the pet trade over the past several centuries. Sorting out the types of lizards in Maui means learning a story of accidental introductions as much as it means learning biology.
Today there are over 17 species inhabiting the Hawaiian islands, and four broad groups account for nearly everything a visitor or resident will spot on Maui: geckos, skinks, anoles, and chameleons. Each group arrived differently, occupies a different niche, and offers its own clues for quick identification. This guide walks through each one, how it got to the island, and what makes it stand out from its neighbors.
1. Geckos
Geckos are the most visible types of lizards in Maui, turning up on lanai screens, inside bathrooms, and clinging to porch lights after dark. Several species were already living in Hawai’i long before Western contact. Mourning geckos, stump-toed geckos, tree geckos, Indo-Pacific geckos, snake-eyed skinks, moth skinks, copper-tailed skinks, and the now-extinct azure-tailed skinks were already established in Hawaiʻi when Captain Cook arrived. Newer arrivals, including several day gecko species, have added even more color to Maui’s gecko lineup.
Gold Dust Day Gecko
The gold dust day gecko (Phelsuma laticauda) is one of Maui’s easiest lizards to identify. These colorful 5-inch long lizards are increasingly widespread on Maui and can be distinguished from other lizards by the sprinkling of gold dust along the side of their necks. The species is native to Madagascar, and its entire Hawaiian population traces back to a single reckless act: a student intentionally and illegally released eight geckos near Mānoa on Oʻahu in 1974.
The lizards took decades to reach Maui. On Maui, residents began seeing gold dust day geckos in Kīhei in the mid-1990s, and today they are common throughout South Maui, Central Maui, and Upcountry. They aren’t fussy eaters, either. Gold dust day geckos eat insects like cockroaches, ants, flies, beetles, and spiders, but they also have a sweet tooth and may be found lapping up nectar from flowers or fruit. Anyone curious about how introduced species establish themselves elsewhere can compare notes with the broader lizard population across the Hawaiian Islands, where similar patterns repeat on Oʻahu and the Big Island.
Giant Day Gecko and Orange-Spotted Day Gecko
Two larger relatives round out Maui’s day gecko lineup, though both remain concentrated mainly on Oʻahu for now. The Orange-spotted Day Gecko and the Madagascar Giant Day Gecko were introduced illegally to the island of Oʻahu; the Orange-spotted Day Gecko can grow to be 7 inches long, and the Madagascar Giant Day Gecko can reach lengths of 10-12 inches and is often found inside the walls of human homes.
Pro Tip: Both the giant day gecko and orange-spotted day gecko were illegally imported and are known in only a few places on Oʻahu, so if you spot one on Maui, report it to 643PEST.org so biologists can track its spread.
Mourning Gecko
The mourning gecko is one of the stranger types of lizards in Maui because every individual is female. The Mourning gecko is an all-female species that could have arrived even before the first Hawaiians, due to its ability to tolerate exposure to saltwater. That said, it’s losing ground to a more aggressive relative. It’s found all over Hawai’i, but is being pushed out by the aggressive common house gecko.
Tokay Gecko
The tokay gecko is Maui’s heavyweight, though sightings remain rare outside Oʻahu. The Tokay gecko (Gekko gecko) is a much larger, 8-14 inch species found on Oʻahu, presumably after pets were released. The species is native to South and Southeast Asia, the same tropical region covered in this breakdown of lizard species in Malaysia, where wild tokay populations are common in forests and buildings alike.
House Gecko
The common house gecko is now the gecko most people in Hawaii actually see. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, mourning and stump-toed geckos were the most common lizards around lights at night on Kauaʻi, but that has since changed, and now the house gecko is by far the most abundant gecko in urban and suburban areas. Researchers believe it likely arrived on cargo ships in the 1940s before making the islands its permanent home. The species is just as familiar across Southeast Asia and the Pacific, including the geckos featured in this guide to lizard species found in the Philippines.
| Gecko Species | Approximate Size | How It Arrived | Where to Spot It on Maui |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold Dust Day Gecko | About 5 inches | Illegally released near Mānoa, Oʻahu, in 1974 | South and Central Maui yards, spreading Upcountry |
| Giant Day Gecko | 10-12 inches | Illegally introduced to Oʻahu | Inside home walls, mostly Oʻahu |
| Orange-Spotted Day Gecko | Up to 7 inches | Illegally introduced to Oʻahu | Gardens and tree cover, mostly Oʻahu |
| Mourning Gecko | Small, all-female species | Possibly arrived via saltwater-tolerant eggs before Polynesian settlement | Island-wide, being displaced by house geckos |
| Tokay Gecko | 8-14 inches | Likely escaped or released pets | Rare; mostly reported on Oʻahu |
| House Gecko | Small | Likely stowed away on cargo ships in the 1940s | Most abundant gecko in yards and buildings |
2. Skinks
Skinks are the shyest of Maui’s lizards, more often heard rustling through leaf litter than seen basking in the open. Maui has only one common species today, the mottled snake-eyed skink (Cryptoblepharus poecilopleurus), and it makes up for its small size with speed. The Mottled Snake Eye Skink is smaller than a middle finger, with a coppery metallic sheen, and it’s very fast — you’ll see it shooting through fallen leaves at your feet while hiking, or slipping through the rocks of a lava field.
Like most of Maui’s reptiles, it survives on a steady diet of bugs. Like the geckos, skinks subsist on insects, and in Hawaii you find them comfortably living somewhere between sea level and about 3,000 feet. A wider variety of skink species once lived in the islands, but that diversity is gone now. The copper-striped blue-tailed skink, also known as the Hawaiian skink, was declared extinct in 2013, though the last confirmed sighting in the state was on the Nā Pali coast of Kauaʻi back in the 1960s.
Important Note: The Hawaiian skink was the islands’ last surviving native lizard. Every skink a visitor sees on Maui today, including the mottled snake-eyed skink, is an introduced species filling the niche the native skink once occupied.
Skink diversity elsewhere in the country looks very different. Compare Maui’s single species to the desert-adapted lizards cataloged in this overview of lizard species in Arizona, where multiple skink and whiptail species share the same rocky terrain.
3. Anoles
Anoles are Maui’s color-change specialists, and two species — one green, one brown — dominate gardens, walls, and roadside vegetation across the island. Both were introduced through the pet trade, but they occupy different layers of the same landscape.
The green anole (Anolis carolinensis) sticks close to the treetops. The green anole, or Carolina anole, was introduced to Hawaii in the 1950s via the pet trade and seems to stay in high humidity areas, near plants with large leaves in which it can bask; it is a more arboreal species than the brown anole, which is a ground-dwelling lizard. Its diet includes spiders, flies, crickets, small beetles, and other insects, and it grows to 5-9 inches in total length, found on Oʻahu, Maui, the Big Island, Kauaʻi, and Molokaʻi. Males claim their own basking spots close to home. Male green anoles use patios — called a lanai in the islands — and concrete walks for sunning themselves, fighting amongst themselves, and attracting their very finicky mates. The species is just as common on the mainland, where it’s featured in this guide to lizard species found in Florida.
The brown anole (Anolis sagrei) took a very different route to Maui. It is originally native to Cuba and the Bahamas and probably came to Hawaii as a stowaway on some plants or via the pet trade, first seen in 1980 on Oʻahu. Now it is found in Hawaii on Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Maui, and the Big Island, and like the green anole, males have a throat flap called a dewlap that can be extended to attract a mate or display against a rival. One population near Pearl Harbor stands out from the rest: a population of this lizard in the Pearl Harbor area has the unique feature that all of them have rusty orange heads, possibly from a separate introduction most likely tied to the pet trade.
Unlike true chameleons, brown anoles have limited color-changing ability. Like chameleons, anoles can change color, but brown anoles can only change their shade of brown. When they feel threatened or are trying to attract a mate, they show a bright pop of orange and red through their dewlap instead. They also favor different real estate than their green cousins. They can be found on stone steps and rock walls sunning themselves, on sidewalks, canals, yards, shrubs, and planters. For a closer look at the Caribbean lizards this species left behind, see this guide to lizard species in Jamaica.
Key Insight: A quick way to tell Maui’s two anoles apart without checking color: green anoles are almost always found up in foliage, while brown anoles stick to the ground, walls, and pavement.
Herpetologists who track introduced reptiles across the islands have documented this same green-versus-brown pattern repeatedly. Reptiles Magazine’s field notes on Hawaiian herping describe both anole species living side by side in the same neighborhoods, separated mainly by how high off the ground they choose to perch.
4. Chameleons
Of all the types of lizards in Maui, the chameleon draws the most double-takes from visitors. The most popular lizard in Hawaii is the Jackson’s chameleon, popular because of how much it looks like a dinosaur, with big eyes and a sticky tongue that is a lot longer than its body. The Jackson’s chameleon (Chamaeleo jacksonii) didn’t start out on Maui, either. It was released on a small plot of land in Kāneʻohe, Oʻahu, and soon made its way to most all islands in the Hawaiian chain.
Males and females look strikingly different from each other. Male Jackson’s chameleons can grow 10-12 inches long and have three horns, while females are smaller and hornless. That size and those horns make them easy to spot clinging to garden shrubs and tree branches, especially in cooler, misty parts of Upcountry Maui where the species tends to concentrate.
Their diet is where things get complicated for conservationists. Roughly one-third of a Jackson’s chameleon’s diet is native insects, and the lizards consume large numbers of arthropods every day. The Hawaii Invasive Species Council classifies the chameleon as an invasive species for exactly this reason, and researchers have gone further, publishing the first record of invasive Jackson’s chameleon predation on native Hawaiian species after documenting the lizard hunting endemic insects directly.
Important Note: Because Jackson’s chameleons prey on insects found nowhere else on Earth, wildlife officials discourage releasing captive chameleons into the wild anywhere in Hawaii, even when an owner can no longer keep one as a pet.
Chameleons aren’t the only dramatic-looking lizards people keep as pets before some end up loose in the wild. Readers interested in how other unusual lizard species are kept and cared for can browse this overview of uromastyx lizard varieties, a completely different family with its own set of care requirements and color patterns.
The peer-reviewed diet research behind Hawaii’s chameleon management decisions came from long-term fieldwork on the ground. The Biological Invasions study on Chamaeleo jacksonii remains one of the most cited sources for understanding how the species spread and what it eats once established.
Maui’s four lizard groups — geckos, skinks, anoles, and chameleons — tell a bigger story about how isolated islands change once people start moving species around. None of these lizards asked to come to Hawaii, yet each one has carved out a niche in gardens, forests, and lava fields that no native reptile occupies anymore. For a sense of how differently lizard diversity plays out on a mainland landmass instead of an island chain, the wide range of species covered in this guide to Mexican beaded lizards makes for a useful comparison. Anyone keeping an eye out on a hike or in the backyard now has a reasonable shot at naming exactly which of Maui’s lizards just darted past.