Critically Endangered
Be'er Sheva Fringe-fingered Lizard
Acanthodactylus beershebensis
Be'er Sheva Fringe-fingered Lizard is a lizard or snake in the family Lacertidae — Acanthodactylus beershebensis, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
The hatchlings of A. Beershebensis have a bright blue tail and dark and yellowish stripes on the body. Even so, a few weeks after birth, the tail becomes brownish gray, and the body turns to a blotchy brownish, sand-gray coloration, that remains through adulthood. This pattern gives the name to the "Acanthodactylus pardalis group" to that A. Beershebensis belongs. (In Greek, pardalis, means leopard).
Adults vary in size from 17 to 20 cm (6.7 to 7.9 in), but can get much larger.
Range and habitat
The species is endemic to the loess scrublands of the Negev desert in Israel, a biodiversity hotspot. This decline has been caused by habitat destruction and degradation.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
Many of the individual species in this genus are similar, but varying coloration explains why each species has been separated. A. Beershebensis was declared critically endangered after an assessment in 2006 of serious population decline. The small populations are severely fragmented across the Negev desert.
A. Beershebensis is a critically endangered species, partly due to an ecological trap created by the conservation of plant biomass and species richness within its habitat. When trees are planted in perch-less habitats it increases the number of avian predators and gives them a hunting advantage.
Be'er Sheva Fringe-fingered Lizard is Critically 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 Be'er Sheva Fringe-fingered Lizard, Wikidata item Q2822529. 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.
