Aeolian Wall Lizard

Range and habitat

The natural habitats of P. Raffonei are Mediterranean-type shrubby vegetation and rocky shores. There are only four locations hosting P. Raffonei, all of them in the Aeolian Islands: the island of Strombolicchio, a small islet off the coast of the nearby island of Salina, another off the coast of the island of Filicudi, and some areas of Vulcano. The species is endemic to Italy and is assessed as endangered by the IUCN due to its limited habitat and small populations.

The largest extant population is on the Capo Grosso peninsula of Vulcano island, where surveys in 2015 and 2017 estimated between 800 and 1,300 adult lizards, accounting for more than half of the species' remaining habitat.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

In crisis

The overall population of P. Raffonei is around 2,000 – 2,500 mature individuals distributed on a surface not bigger than 5,525 m2 (.002 mi2). Such tiny and fragmented populations are highly vulnerable to random events and demographic fluctuations. Field observations revealed a dramatic shift in dorsal colour patterns between 2015 and 2017: whereas nearly all individuals displayed the typical brown P. Raffonei pattern in 2015, fewer than half did so two years later, suggesting a rapid increase in hybrids or introgressed forms.

Aeolian Wall Lizard is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Aeolian Wall Lizard, Wikidata item Q3727571. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.