A Guide To

LACERTID LIZARDS

and other members of the family Lacertidae

Introduction

Lacertids is a term that is more or less synonymous with the lizards of the family Lacertidae, particularly the Lacerta species themselves. Most Europeans will probably unconsciously think of a lacertid if the word "lizard" is mentioned, and indeed Lacertids are very much an Old World family, centred in Europe (not a continent renowned for its reptiles) but also with species in Africa and Asia. Many make good pet lizards, but there is still no single popular English language book dedicated to them, unlike the more widely kept Leopard Geckos, Blue-Tongued Skinks and Bearded Dragons, for example.

What follows is a rough guide to the Lacertidae family, its genera and species, with a special emphasis on the Lacerta and Podarcis species. The data herein has been compiled from several sources, and also from a bit of personal experience with these marvellous lizards.

The family Lacertidae

Lizard taxonomy (classification) is in a state of flux at the moment, and a number of traditional designations have been overthrown in the last few years, both by fairly certain methods (eg mitochondrial DNA testing) and the more controversial "splitting", whereby established groupings are broken up into smaller units and further subspecies are added, often on the basis of unsure characteristics such as colouring. This guide will try to give both the long-established species names and the new ones.

The Lacertidae are members of the infraorder Scincomorpha, a group that also includes the skinks (Scincidae), cordylids or sungazers (Cordylidae), plated lizards, zonosaurs and relatives (Gerrhosauridae) and tegus and racerunners (Teiidae), plus the lesser known night lizards (Xantusiidae) and dibamids (Dibamidae). As the name "scincomorph" implies, most of these lizards have similar shaped bodies, ie skink-like, although the night lizards outwardly might seem to resemble geckos. Unlike skinks, however, lacertids are fairly conservative in structure, with little or no limb reduction and a fairly similar body design throughout the different genera: pointed snout, long whiplike tail and sexual differentiation through colour and pores, and often jowls in older males. Most are egg layers.

The table below should, strictly speaking, be divided into two subfamilies, the Gallotiinae (Gallotia and Psammodromus) and Lacertinae (all the rest).

Characteristics of the family

Lacertids are characterised by the following traits:

• Tail is almost always longer than the body.
• Upper temporal arches are completely ossified.
• Pterygoid and palatine bones are paired and lie close together anteriorly: pterygoids often bear a group of palatal teeth
• Dentition is pleurodont: teeth rather uniform, with 1-3 points, and set on paired maxilla and single premaxilla of upper jaw, and on paired dentary bones of lower jaw.
• No dermal ossifications on trunk and tail, but shields on top of head are underlain by bony elements which are inseparably fused to bones of skull: dermal ossifications at temples and on back part of jaw.
• Head shields are partly if not wholly enlarged and symmetrically arranged.
• Dorsal scales may be flalt or have bosses or keels, and may be flush or imbricate (overlapping).
• Ventral scales are always larger than the dorsal scales and are arranged in distinct transverse and longitudinal rows.
• Tail scales are set in whorls.
• Throat scales are usually set off from breast scales by a transverse fold. The edge of this fold points backwards and bears enlarged scales.
• Femoral pores are usually present.

Distribution of the family

Lacertidae are most often associated with Europe (at least in the minds of Europeans!), but it remains true that seven genera in the family are found on that continent if one takes Turkey as part of Europe. Lacerta are found in every part of the continent, including the fairly reptile-free areas such as Ireland and Scandinavia, and Podarcis is a large European genus whose species furthermore have in some cases a very high number of subspecies.

There is a surprisingly large number of little-known Lacertidae genera in Africa. Most of these seem to be based in East Africa, but some have spread as far as North, West and Central Africa. There is little information commonly available on these interesting lizards, partly no doubt due to the difficult climatic, geographical and political conditions of the continent, but also due to the shy or secretive nature of many of these species. It is an interesting anomaly that in southern Africa, separated from their European, North African and Asian brethren, exist eight genera of the Lacertidae. How this separation came about is still uncertain. Nor have these lizards greatly diverged in form from their more northerly relatives.

Asia is somewhat underrepresented since - depending on one's definition of Asia - there are really only two or three genera of Asian lacertids, of which only Takydromus, the Grass Lizards, can be considered tropical. Nevertheless these are widespread and found as far afield as Indonesia. Eremias has a wide distribution in the colder parts of Asia, being found in the steppes from its most westerly point in SE Europe as far east as Mongolia and China. The genus Timon is placed here also since it is little known and two of its three species occur in Turkey, which might just qualify as Asia. This would be less anomalous if the genus did not also include (according to some authorities, including EMBL) the Ocellated Lizard Timon lepida (better known as Lacerta lepida) of southern France, northern Spain and northern Italy.

For those wishing to consider the lacertids by rough area of distribution and/or genus size, I offer the following table:

Availability and Breeding

Time was when virtually all European hobbyists started in their youth by keeping one of the European Lacerta or Podarcis species. The change of political and ecological climate have however caused a complete alteration of the situation, so that nowadays aspiring lizard keepers are far more likely to keep admittedly non-difficult species from Central Asia or Australia, while lacertids are now seen as a specialisation rather than a stepping stone. At present members of the Lacerta and Podarcis genera are still seen in the pet trade, albeit infrequently, along with a number of Takydromus and a very much smaller number of Eremias (the latter being reportedly difficult to keep alive, being short-lived in the wild in any case). At the moment virtually all non-European individuals (South African species are all prohibited from export) are wild-caught, and while this does not seem to be placing a strain on the indigenous populations, in the interests of conservation we ought to be making every effort to produce more captive offspring. This is especially so as nearly all European lizards are now protected by law, while those in Africa and Asia are subject to ongoing environmental degradation of their habitats and political uncertainty.

	QUICK INDEX
Acanthodactylus, Fringe-Fingered Lizards	Adolfus, Forest Lizards	Algyroides, Algyroides
Austrolacerta, Rock Lizards	Darevskia, Rock Lizards	Eremias, Steppe Runners
Gallotia, Canary Island Lizards	Gastropholis, Keel-Bellied Ground Lizards	Heliobolus, Bushveld Lizards
Holaspis, Blue-Tailed Tree Lizard	Ichnotropis, Rough-Scaled Lizards	Lacerta, Green Lizards
Latastia, Long-Tailed Lizards	Meroles, Desert Lizards	Mesalina, Tiger Lizards
Nucras, Sandveld Lizards	Ophisops, Snake-Eyed Lizards	Pedioplanis, Sand Lizards
Philochortus, Orange-Tailed Lizards	Podarcis, Wall Lizards	Poromera, Striped Lizard
Pseuderemias, Greater Racerunners	Psammodromus, Psammodromus	Takydromus, Asian Grass Lizards
Timon, Jewelled Lizards	Tropidosaurus, Mountain Lizards

Bibliography

There does not seem to be a single contemporary English-language book devoted to the Lacertidae, either their care in captivity or their natural history in the wild. However, several books offer sections on their care or ecology, and the Internet has proven to be a useful source of taxonomic information, especially the ever-reliable TIGR Reptile Database, which has a slender but very useful reference at the end.

Collins Field Guide: Reptiles & Amphibians of Britain & Europe, E N Arnold, J A Burton and D W Ovenden, HarperCollins 1978.

Field Guide to Snakes and Other Reptiles of Southern Africa, Bill Branch, Struik, Cape Town 1998.

PraxisRatgeber: Eidechsen, Manfred Rogner, Edition Chimaira 2002, Frankfurt am Main. This German-language book is so far the only one I know that is dedicated to the Lacertidae, including their husbandry and breeding. It covers all the genera, although some (notably the Africans) are discussed fairly generally and briefly. The major European species are well covered and a bonus is a listing of each genus and species at the back of the book. Hopefully the publishers will produce an English translation soon.

A-Z of Lizard Care, Bartlett & Bartlett, Barrons, 1995. Good but brief sections on a few Lacerta lizards.

Keeping and Breeding Lizards, Mattison, Blandford 1996. A good chapter on the entire Lacertidae family that covers many of the lizards, even some not normally seen in captivity.

Echsen [Lizards] Vol 2, Rogner, Ullmer Verlag, 1992. Usually a very good source of information, although it has been pointed out to me by one source in at least one section there was a "theoretical" guess as to the captive requirements of a particular species that is in reality very hard to keep alive.

Animal Life Encyclopedia Volume 6: Reptiles, Grzimek,1975.

Links

www.lacerta.de is an excellent site, the chief drawback for English speakers being that it is in German.

Lizard Families | Main Lizards Page | Reptiles | Herpetology | Home Page