THE CENTER FOR NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY

Reptilia    Squamata (part)    Teiidae  

Rainbow Whiptail
Cnemidophorus lemniscatus (Linnaeus, 1758)

Current SSAR Comments:
Native to Guatemala south to Argentina. It was introduced via the pet trade during the 1960s in Hialeah, Miami-Dade County, Florida but these individuals did not establish (King and Krakauer, 1966, Quarterly Journal of the Florida Academy of Sciences 29: 144–154; Wilson and Porras, 1983, The Ecological Impact of Man on the South Florida Herpetofauna. University of Kansas Museum of Natural History, Special Publication 9: i–vi + 1–89). It has since established at other localities in northern Miami-Dade County (Bartlett, 1995, U.S. Tropical Fish Hobbyist 43: 112, 114–119, 121–122, 124–126; Punzo, 2001, Herpetological Review 32: 85–87; Meshaka et al., 2004, The Exotic Amphibians and Reptiles of Florida. Krieger Publishing Company, Malabar, Florida; Enge and Krysko, 2019, Cnemidophorus lemniscatus. Pages 432–433 in Krysko et al. (Editors) Amphibians and Reptiles of Florida. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida). Several species, both uni- and bisexual, have been described for different parts of the taxon that was formerly known as C. lemniscatus (King and Krakauer, 1966, Quarterly Journal of the Florida Academy of Sciences 29: 144–154; Cole and Dessauer, 1993, American Museum Novitates. 3081: 1–30; Markezich et al., 1997, American Museum Novitates. 3207: 1–60). This introduced population is bisexual but has not yet been associated with one or more of those species.

Range maps are based on curated specimens and provided gratis by CNAH.
(Created by Travis W. Taggart; Version: 2023.04.08.12.31.18)
Download GeoJSON polygon range file: - 0.01 MB

First instance(s) of published English names:
No historic English names have been assigned to this taxon yet.

Taxon Links:

  
Catalog of American Amphibians and Reptiles
  
The Reptile Database
  
NatureServe
  
iNaturalist
  
GenBank
  
USGS - Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database

Pertinent LIterature:
1758 Linné, Carl von (=Linneaus). Systema Naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis. [System of Nature through the three kingdoms of nature, according to classes, orders, genera, species with characters, differences, synonyms, places.] 10th Edition, Volume 1, L. Salvius, Stockholm. iv + 826pp.
1966 King, F. Wayne and Thomas Krakauer. The exotic herpetofauna of southeast Florida. Quarterly Journal of the Florida Academy of Sciences 29(2):144–154
1993 Cole, Charles J. and Herbert C. Dessauer. Unisexual and bisexual whiptail lizards of the Cnemidophorus lemniscatus complex (Squamata: Teiidae) of the Guiana Region, South America, with descriptions of new species. American Museum Novitates (3081):1-30
1997 Markezich, Allan L., Charles J. Cole, and Herbert C. Dessauer. The blue and green whiptail lizards (Squamata: Teiidae: Cnemidophorus) of the Peninsula de Paraguana, Venezuela: Systematics, ecology, descriptions of two new taxa, and relationships to whiptails of the Guianas. American Museum Novitates (3207):1-60

THE CENTER FOR NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY — Accessed: Thursday 30 January 2025 02:42 CT