Animalia > Chordata > Squamata > Phrynosomatidae > Urosaurus > Urosaurus graciosus

Urosaurus graciosus (Brush Lizard; long-tailed brush lizard)

Synonyms: Uta graciosa

Wikipedia Abstract

The long-tailed brush lizard, Urosaurus graciosus, occurs in the Mojave and northwestern Sonoran Deserts in the states of California, Arizona, Nevada, Sonora, and Baja California. This species received its common name due to its tail, which is more than twice the body length, and since it is almost always encountered on a tree or shrub. Its gray or tan coloration keep it well camouflaged against branches while it waits for insects. Unlike most other phrynosomatid lizards, which bury in the sand at night during warm weather, U. graciosus spends the night on the tips of branches.
View Wikipedia Record: Urosaurus graciosus

Infraspecies

Urosaurus graciosus graciosus (Western brush lizard)
Urosaurus graciosus shannoni (Arizona brush lizard)

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  4 grams
Gestation [1]  41 days
Litter Size [1]  7
Litters / Year [1]  3
Reproductive Mode [2]  Oviparous
Snout to Vent Length [1]  1.968 inches (5 cm)
Habitat Substrate [2]  Arboreal

Ecoregions

Name Countries Ecozone Biome Species Report Climate Land
Use
Baja California desert Mexico Nearctic Deserts and Xeric Shrublands
California coastal sage and chaparral Mexico, United States Nearctic Mediterranean Forests, Woodlands, and Scrub
Jalisco dry forests Mexico Neotropic Tropical and Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests
Mojave desert United States Nearctic Deserts and Xeric Shrublands
Sonoran desert Mexico, United States Nearctic Deserts and Xeric Shrublands

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
California Floristic Province Mexico, United States No
Mesoamerica Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama No

Predators

Buteogallus anthracinus (Common Black-Hawk)[3]

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Nathan 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
♦ 2Meiri, 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
♦ 3Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
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