Pityuse lizard
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Pityuse lizard ( Podarcis pityusensis ) |
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| Podarcis pityusensis | ||||||||||||
| ( Boscá , 1883) |
The Pityusen lizard ( Podarcis pityusensis ) or Pityusen wall lizard belongs to the family of the real lizards (Lacertidae) and to the genus of the wall lizards ( Podarcis ).
The pityusen lizard is a diurnal lizard that occurs in large numbers in its habitat and hardly shows any fear. It eats insects and other arthropods as well as plants and leftover food (e.g. ripe fruit or breadcrumbs).
features
It has a six to nine centimeter long robust body that is not flattened. Their head is short and their tail relatively long. The back color is mostly blue-green, but it can also vary. Most of the time, the lizards have small furrows that join together in three longitudinal rows. The middle row in particular is often criss-crossed by black, net-like stripes. The underside is often drawn light gray to bluish. The back scales are hexagonal and weakly wedged.
habitat
The Pityusen lizard occurs almost exclusively on the Pityusen archipelago belonging to the Balearic Islands . In addition, there is a small population on Mallorca . The Pityusen lizard has also been sighted in Barcelona on the Spanish mainland.
In Ibiza , their habitat extends from sea level to around 475 meters above sea level. Here it is mainly found in bushes, ruins, stone walls or stony wastelands, on the smaller islands also on rocks.
Subspecies
Over 40 subspecies live on the many isolated islands, in distributed areas, of which 22 are still valid and look different.
Types of confusion
The closely related Balearic Lizard with 25 subspecies inhabits the neighboring archipelago of the Balearic Islands. The differences are: the flat dorsal scales of the Pityusen lizard are coarse and slightly wedged (see physique ). There are two other wall lizards, the spectacled lizard and the Madeira wall lizard . These two species have also been introduced to mainland Europe.
protection
The pityusen lizard is listed by the European Union in Annexes II and IV of the Habitats Directive and is therefore a species of community interest that must be strictly protected, for whose preservation special protected areas must be designated by the member states.
literature
- Axel Kwet: Reptiles and Amphibians of Europe. Kosmos, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-440-10237-8 , pp. 166-167.
Web links
- Photos of the Pityusen lizard on www.herp.it
- Podarcis pityusensis in The Reptile Database
- Podarcis pityusensis inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Posted by: Valentin Pérez-Mellado, Iñigo Martínez-Solano, 2008. Retrieved March 26, 2014.