A discovery has been made! Two new species of woodlizards were found in the Peruvian jungles; Enyalioides azulae and Enyalioides binzayedi. They were specifically found in Cordillera Azul National Park, a somewhat unexplored forest in Peru. These species show sexual dimorphism through their color variations. The males have a beautiful, bold green pattern with a dark brown and black background while the females do not have this beautiful green coloration.
Even though these two new species share the same territory, there is a small difference in their altitude ranges. This makes their biological differences very interesting to study from an evolutionary standpoint. Enyalioides were once thought to have low species diversity. Recently, however, more fieldwork has discovered an increase in species richness. Three out of the ten known species have been described within the last five years! This proves that as fieldwork increases, more and more species may be uncovered. As a result of these discoveries, Peru now holds the greatest diversity of woodlizards.
I personally thought that this news article was very interesting. It showed how little we really know about the animals that live around us. It is always very exciting when a new species is discovered and I thought that this story did a good job of covering the basic information of this new discovery.
Tatiana Reinhardt
Link to the article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115224.htm
Journal referenced:
Pablo Venegas, Omar Torres-Carvajal, Vilma Duran, Kevin de Queiroz. Two sympatric new species of woodlizards (Hoplocercinae, Enyalioides) from Cordillera Azul National Park in northeastern Peru. ZooKeys, 2013; 277
2 comments:
good find! since there are still species to be found that means there's plenty of room for aspiring herpetologists to get their name in the history books.
Is the lizard on the bottom one of the newly-discovered species? How gorgeous!
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