Animalia > Chordata > Squamata > Cordylidae > Cordylus > Cordylus nyikae

Cordylus nyikae (Nyika Girdled Lizard)

Wikipedia Abstract

An isolated population of the Rhodesian girdled lizard (Cordylus rhodesianus) from granite outcrops in montane grassland of northern Malawi was recently redescribed as Cordylus nyikae. Unlike the Rhodesian girdled lizard, the head shields of this species are very rugose, the nostrils are pierced in the lower posterior corner of the nasal scales, and the dorsals do not have a serrated posterior margin. The dorsal coloration is dark brown to gray-brown with lighter spots. The tail and upper lips are light brown. The belly is buff. Its common name is Nyika girdled lizard.
View Wikipedia Record: Cordylus nyikae

Attributes

Habitat Substrate [1]  Saxicolous
Reproductive Mode [1]  Viviparous

Ecoregions

Name Countries Ecozone Biome Species Report Climate Land
Use
Southern Rift montane forest-grassland mosaic Malawi, Tanzania Afrotropic Montane Grasslands and Shrublands

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Eastern Afromontane Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Uganda, Yemen, Zimbabwe Yes

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
1Meiri, 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
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