Central Spain

[Gabriel Martínez]

Great Peter! bastardas are the coolest snakes in Spain

[Peter Oefinger]

What a great Trip, so much snakefood!

Even if you speak about snakefood - the variability of this food is astonishing and it still bears some surprises. These snakes are lucky!

[Matthijs Hollanders]

Pretty cool. I got to work with all of those Podarcis earlier this year and it's nice to see them again, as well as to see some backup for sympatrically occurring hispanicus complex animals.

[Peter Oefinger]

as well as to see some backup for sympatrically occurring hispanicus complex animals.

Did you really notice sympatry or are the species just replaced by each other?

[miguel santos]

It is indeed a great report and I can understand you can go bananas while looking to a specific animal that looks a bit "diferent" in contact areas.
I never went to the Central Eastern part of Spain but I remember years ago with no camera and a lot less experience in Portugal just to the South of Porto.
There P. guadarramae lusitanicus, P. bocagei and P. carbonelli and probably P. virescens contact each other. I remember seeing there all kinds of lizard having lots patterns and color variation.
But in those days there was no reason for an overload, they were all P. hispanica with different colors.....

Take care,

Miguel

[Peter Oefinger]

But in those days there was no reason for an overload, they were all P. hispanica with different colors.....

Miguel, I know what you mean. But for me, it is not about supersplitting into a maximum number of species but to understand the story of these species' genesis. In Western Iberia, this story is well understood by now - in Eastern Iberia, it is not. And that's the thrill

[miguel santos]

Right you are, you did very well indeed to serch the limits of their distribution.
Do you think climate (cold winters for example) may be a limiting factor for some species? I supose they all climb well. There is no overlaping due to some being good climbers and others more ground related like in areas in west Iberia or Greece?

[Peter Oefinger]

Climate is no more a limiting factor, I think. But although they are all wall lizards, liolepis, virescens and hispanicus seem to have different habitat preferences - so I would not exclude overlapping.

[Matthijs Hollanders]

as well as to see some backup for sympatrically occurring hispanicus complex animals.

Did you really notice sympatry or are the species just replaced by each other?

I guess what I meant is the replacement.