January 2007 Lizards Expedition

Participants

• Dr. Luciano Avila, Centro Nacional Patagónico
• Dr. Jack Sites, Brigham Young University
• Cristian Perez, Centro Nacional Patagónico (graduage student in herpetology)
• Cristian Zanotti, Instituto de Botánica Darwinion (graduate student in botany)

Locaton:

Dates:

Work Done

Forty localities were sampled for lizards and plants throughout this region, and about 325 lizards were collected. This total included the gecko (Homonota darwinii), two species of Diplolaemus (D. bibronii and D. darwini), and ~14 species of Liolaemus (not all lizards of these could be confidently assigned to species). Most of the Liolaemus species collected represent the very poorly known “L. kingii group”, and several of these were collected from type localities. A highlight of the trip was the collection of five of six species of lizards for which Puerto Deseado is the type locality; type specimens and paratypes of all of these species were collected by Darwin on the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle.

Pictures