lizards of corsica 2

[Wolfram Schurig]

In addition to my first post on rock lizards of corsica i want to show some old pics mostly of Podarcis tiliguerta. These are all scans from dias i shot in august 2006 - not the best quality but maybe interesting due to some aspekts. During this trip i have observed hundrets of thyrrenian wall lizards and to me me it was quiet clear that there is some relation between habitat structure and colour - not so much pattern which is always veriy variable.

Very dry and hot lowland habitat (>garrigue< and quasi desert-like mixed): a lot of contrast between black and light greyisch pattern, blue tail, some specimen with blue spots - no brown on the back.

tiliguerta_männl_türkis.jpg

tiliguerta_männl_urt5.jpg

tiliguerta_streif_urt.jpg

Specimen from forest habitat with lot of leaf litter on the ground often are brown (often brown or green tail )and look like the individuals you can view in my first post.
Lizards I found on high altitudes from 1000m up to 1600m (for instance Restonica Valley) are coloured brilliantly. Black is almost missing and most individuals show differnt kinds of light brown and grey colours, lots of blue spots extremely blue tails and sometimes a blue shine all over the whole body. These lizerds live in syntopy with A. bedriagae which are alo coloured bightly- sometimes in the same crevices.

tiliguerta_female.jpg

tiliguerta_juv.jpg

tiliguerta_male1.jpg

tiliguerta_male2.jpg

tiliguerta_male3.jpg

AB_rest-kl.jpg

As far as i know there seems to be much less variation in P. tiliguerta on Sardinia. Does anybody share this observation here on the board? Would be very interesting.

By, Wolfram!

[Jürgen Gebhart]

Hello Wolfram,

nice shots!
I will post later a new Topic of my Sardinia Trip 2008 and you will see that the variation is minimum simliar to the Corsica populations!!!

[Peter Oefinger]

Hello Wolfram,
thanks for the great lizards in your posts - I think I have to go to Corsica sometimes...
In April 2007 I have been in Southern Sardinia - no rock lizards there but some tiliguertas. P. tiliguerta on Sardinia differs so much from those on Corsica that the populations are sometimes recognized as different species.
The pictures below show the variation: always strong green/blackish colouration.
Note the throats can be orange, yellow or blue.

tiliguerta.jpg

tiliguerta2.jpg

tiliguerta3.jpg

Regards
Peter

[Wolfram Schurig]

Hello Peter!
Thankyou for the great pics from Sardinia! Yes, they really look like different species! You never have this yollowish green in Corsica nor that variation in ventral/throat colour. Great, that lizard with the deeply blue troat! Amazing!

Regards,

Wolfram