“We racked our brains for alternate explanations for this pattern,” said Dr. Donihue. Could it be temperature? Precipitation? Taller or shorter trees in different locations? “Nothing we tried explains that variation as strongly as hurricane history.”

Not long after Dr. Donihue had been lassoing Anolis scriptus lizards with a loop of string at the end of a fishing rod on a pair of small islands in Turks and Caicos for what was supposed to be just a local conservation project, the same islands were blasted by a one-two punch of extreme weather.

First came Hurricane Irma, a screaming maelstrom of 160-mile-per-hour winds. Two weeks later came Hurricane Maria. When Dr. Donihue returned, trees were down and lizards were scarce. On average, he found the surviving anoles seemed to have much bigger, grippier toe pads than the population had averaged before, as if those with less sticky feet had been carried away by the storms.

That initial finding came out with the leaf blower videos. But the team kept digging. Eighteen months after the storm, Dr. Donihue went back to Turks and Caicos a third time to find a new generation of lizards scampering across new plant growth. Those carefree children of the survivors had kept their parents’ generation’s bigger toe pads.