Animalia > Chordata > Squamata > Teiidae > Aspidoscelis > Aspidoscelis uniparens

Aspidoscelis uniparens (Desert Grassland Whiptail)

Synonyms: Cnemidophorus uniparens

Wikipedia Abstract

The desert grassland whiptail lizard (Aspidoscelis uniparens) is an all-female species of reptiles. It was formerly placed in the genus Cnemidophorus. A. uniparens have limited social stimuli, having only two basic needs: finding food and avoiding predators. A common predator of the whiptail lizard is the leopard lizard, that prey on A. uniparens by using ambush and stalk haunting tactics. These reptiles reproduce by parthenogenesis. In this process, eggs undergo a chromosome doubling after meiosis and developing into lizards without being fertilized. However, ovulation is enhanced by female-female courtship and "mating" (pseudo-copulation) rituals that resemble the behavior of closely related species that reproduce sexually.
View Wikipedia Record: Aspidoscelis uniparens

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  7.5 grams
Birth Weight [2]  1 grams
Female Weight [2]  8 grams
Gestation [2]  53 days
Litter Size [2]  3
Litters / Year [2]  3
Reproductive Mode [3]  Oviparous
Snout to Vent Length [2]  2.362 inches (6 cm)
Habitat Substrate [3]  Terrestrial

Ecoregions

Name Countries Ecozone Biome Species Report Climate Land
Use
Arizona Mountains forests United States Nearctic Temperate Coniferous Forests
Chihuahuan desert Mexico, United States Nearctic Deserts and Xeric Shrublands
Colorado Plateau shrublands United States Nearctic Deserts and Xeric Shrublands
Sierra Madre Occidental pine-oak forests Mexico, United States Nearctic Tropical and Subtropical Coniferous Forests

Protected Areas

Name IUCN Category Area acres Location Species Website Climate Land Use
Coronado National Monument National Memorial III 4360 Arizona, United States
Fort Bowie National Historic Site III 1004 Arizona, United States
Jornada Biosphere Reserve Ib 30913 New Mexico, United States
Montezuma Castle National Monument V 872 Arizona, United States
Sevilleta LTER Site Long Term Ecological Research IV 228335 New Mexico, United States

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Madrean Pine-Oak Woodlands Mexico, United States No

Predators

Sistrurus tergeminus (Desert massasauga)[4]

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
1Length–weight allometries in lizards, S. Meiri, Journal of Zoology 281 (2010) 218–226
2Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
3Meiri, Shai (2019), Data from: Traits of lizards of the world: variation around a successful evolutionary design, Dryad, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.f6t39kj
4Variation in the Diet of Sistrurus catenatus (Massasauga), with Emphasis on Sistrurus catenatus edwardsii (Desert Massasauga); Andrew T. Holycross and Stephen P. Mackessy; Journal of Herpetology, Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 454–464, 2002
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0