Blainville's Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma blainvillii)
Description: The San Diego Horned Lizard or the Blainville's Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma blainvillii) is a flat bodied lizard with long spiky horns located on the top and side of its head and has smaller spikes throughout its body and tail. The length of an adult size lizard can range from 2.5 inches to 4.5 inches measure from the tip of its snout to its bottom just before where the tail starts. They are either red, brown, yellow or gray in color and have several black spots on their back and neck.
Habitat: These lizards are usually found to habitat near mountains in areas that are sandy, with low vegetation and near ant hills.
Range: This species ranges from the Central Valley of California south through southern California to northern Baja California.
Found in these States:
CA
Diet: Their diet is mostly Harvester ants but they do eat spiders, beetles, termites, and other insects.
Reproduction: In Southern California, the San Diego horned lizard's reproductive period ranges from early March to June. Each year the female Blainville's horned lizard can lay about 6 to 21 eggs in a year. A few months after they are laid in August and September they begin to hatch. The females will lay their eggs in the Santa Monica and Simi Hills area.
Status: This species has a wide range extending from northern California to northwestern Baja California. Many historically occupied sites no longer support substantial subpopulations due to historical and ongoing threats from urbanization, agriculture, over collecting, and possibly the effects of non-native ant species. Nevertheless, subpopulations remain in a large number of locations over a wide area, the overall population is not severely fragmented, and the rate of decline likely is substantially less than 30% over 10 years or three generations. Hence the species is listed as Least Concern.
»» Kingdom: Animalia - Animals
»» Phylum: Chordata - Chordates
»» Subphylum: Vertebrata - Vertebrates
»» Class: Reptilia - Reptiles
»» Order: Squamata - Lizards
»» Family: Phrynosomatidae - North American Spiny Lizards
»» Genus: Phrynosoma
»» Species: Phrynosoma blainvillii - Blainville's Horned Lizard
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "San Diego horned lizard", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0. Content may have been omitted from the original, but no content has been changed or extended.
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