Sceloporus becki
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| Van Denburgh , 1905 |
Sceloporus becki is a species of iguana from the genus of the spiny guinea . It is endemic to the islands of the Channel Islands National Park off the coast of California. The species addition becki refers to the American ornithologist Rollo Beck , who collected the first specimens of the species.
features
This barbed guuan can reach a maximum head-trunk length of a little more than 7 cm. The total length can be up to 22 centimeters, with the tail about 1.5 times the length of the rest of the body. According to the first description , Sceloporus becki is greyish, brownish or greenish blue on top with a series of dark brown spots on each side of the back. A pale longitudinal band delimits the back from the sides. The sides are brownish or greyish, marbled with darker brown and spotted or interspersed with green or pale blue. On the head there are usually narrow brown lines that are more or less irregularly distributed. A brown line connects the eye socket with the top corner of the ear and extends to the nape of the neck. The chin and throat are blue, pale at the front and black towards the back, crossed by narrow, sloping black lines that converge towards the end of the body and connect with black spots on the neck and in front of the shoulders in the male. There is a large bruise on each side of the abdomen, which is outlined in black on the inside in strongly colored males. There is a white spot on each side of the anus and a yellowish white band runs along the femoral pores .
The number of scales in a row between the interparietal plate and a line connecting the posterior surfaces of the thighs vary from 43 to 48, the number of femoral pores is 14 to 19, on average 16.
habitat
Van Denburgh usually found the animals on the ground under bushes and clumps of cacti, on mounds or on rocks. He saw few on trees or tree stumps.
Taxonomy and research history
Sceloporus becki was first described by John Van Denburgh in 1905 . The specimens from San Miguel Island resembled, as he wrote, Sceloporus occidentalis in size , but more Sceloporus biseriatus in color . However, the San Miguel Island specimens differed from both species in features that were unusual for the Sceloporus undulatus group. Only the holotype , an adult male, is available; the other specimens were destroyed by the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906.
It is variously Sceloporus becki as a subspecies of Sceloporus occidentalis viewed. Wiens and Reeder (1997) see the species on the Californian Channel Islands with certainty as allopatricly distributed and diagnosable (Stebbins 1985) and thus possibly as an independent species. Bell (2001) joins this in his work Taxonomic status of Sceloporus becki, the Island Fence Lizard from the Channel Islands, Santa Barbara Co., California. on.
Individual evidence
- ^ EL Bell and AH Price: Catalog of American Amphibians and Reptiles , Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, page 631
- ↑ Ellin Beltz: Scientific and Common Names of the Reptiles and Amphibians of North America, 2006, see also there
- ↑ a b c Hobart Smith: Handbook of Lizards: Lizards of the United States and of Canada.
- ^ A b Robert C. Stebbins: A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians , 2nd Ed., Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1985, p. 336
- ↑ a b c d J. Van Denburgh: The reptiles and amphibians of the islands of the Pacific Coast of North America from the Farallons to Cape San Lucas and the Revilla Gigedos. 1905 in Proc. Cal. Acad. Sci. (Ser. 3) 4 (1), pp. 9-10. ( Online )
- ^ A b Edwin L. Bell, David Chiszar, Hobart M. Smith (2003): An annotated list of the Species-Group names applied to the lizard genus Sceloporus. In: Acta Zoológica Mexicana 90, p. 116. ( Online )
- ^ EL Bell: Taxonomic status of Sceloporus becki, the Island Fence Lizard from the Channel Islands, Santa Barbara Co., California. 2001. In Bulletin of the Maryland Herpetological Society 37: 137-142 ( online )