An Excerpt from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter of February 11, 2008
issued from Mexico's Southernmost State, CHIAPAS

ROSEBELLY LIZARDS AGAIN

You might remember one day back in Querétaro when a Rosebelly Lizard, SCELOPORUS VARIABILIS, rushed into my casita and parked beneath my chair long enough for me to take the photo that's still archived online at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/07/070505lz.jpg.

I think I've found the same species here, this time actually showing a somewhat rosy belly. You can see it parked on the trunk of a Ramón tree in a shadowy woods below:

Rosebelly Lizard, SCELOPORUS VARIABILIS

You can see that this one is a little different from the Querétaro one, but not much, especially for someone with a species name like variabilis.

The species is abundant here. I'm parking the picture here for that eventual graduate student who might come along someday trying to clean up the mess the genus Sceloporus is in, and who might like to see some of variablilis's variations I've run into.

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