seals and lizards

[Wolfram Schurig]

Hi there!

Yesterday I went to Zürich with my familiy to visit the zoo. Nice vivariums there with lot of highlights and of course the Masoala rainforest hall where you can experience the fauna of Madagascar quasi in situ (chamaeleons and geckos living freely etc...). I really wasn't prepared for any fieldherping activity there - but somtimes things come little bit different...

We where all waiting for the seals-feeding-show when my son viewed a sand lizard hatchling in a Berberis bush climbing around in the twigs.

Then i heard some noise in the leaf litter which was covering the ground around some big moss-coverd boulders. Of course I expected mom and dad of that hatchling - but:

male

female

male2

This is very clearly Podarcis muralis nigriventris all males and femals we found were green. I am concernd with introduced wall lizard for some time now but I didn't know that nigri-pop on Züriberg. I wonder if it it has been known so far??

Would be interesting if our swiss members have heard of that!


Wolfram

[Jürgen Gebhart]

Wolfram, are you sure that this is nigriventris??? Maybe it`s merremius???
I heard only about the introduced population of the Zürich station and I don`t know wich supspecies this is.

[Wolfram Schurig]

I know merremius from the train station in Zürich. They definitely don't have anything to do with these zoo lizards (small brown wall lizards, some of them orange/yellow throats...very typical merr). Again: they ALL are green, males and females and they are really big (the pics are terrible so don't mind the color you can see ). The female on the 2nd shot was clearly > 20cm!(SVL > 6cm). Of course there are some maculi W pops with high percentage of green males, but.. ....At least to me it seems to be quiet clear that these are nigris - although you can never be sure ....

wolfram

[Jürgen Gebhart]

Just joking around!!!!
You know, Bad Ragaz can be everywhere in Switzerland!!!!

[Wolfram Schurig]

You are right Jürgen, obviously