Endangered
Varanus macraei
Varanus macraei
Varanus macraei, also known commonly as the blue-spotted tree monitor and the blue tree monitor, is a monitor lizard endemic to the island of Batanta in Indonesia.
Appearance
As its common names suggest, it is black with scattered blue scales, forming ocellations that may in turn form bands across the back. The tip of the snout is light blue, and the lower jaw is white with uniform green scales along the neck, forming a v-shaped pattern. There are fewer than nine dorsal crossbands, and the legs are heavily spotted with turquoise ocelli.
Like all members of the prasinus-group, with 22–23 more or less symmetrical blue rings, the tail is prehensile and about 1.95 times as long as the snout-to-vent length (SVL).
Range and habitat
The distribution of Varanus macraei is restricted to the island of Batanta, on the northwestern tip of the Vogelkop peninsula of Irian Jaya of Indonesia. This may be the smallest distribution of any tree monitor, as this island has a size of only 450 km2, comparable with Lake Constance of Central Europe. The blue-spotted tree monitor inhabits tropical forests that average 28–38 °C (83–100 °F).
Varanus macraei, also known commonly as the blue-spotted tree monitor and the blue tree monitor, is a monitor lizard endemic to the island of Batanta in Indonesia.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Varanus macreai is diurnal and arboreal. Thus it avoids predators by fleeing up a tree and keeping the trunk between itself and the intruder, as many anoles do. No studies have been published on the diet of V. Macraei, but it is likely primarily made up of (in order) stick insects, orthopterans (grasshoppers, katydids and crickets), moths, beetles, smaller lizards, small eggs, and the occasional berry.
In crisis
Varanus macraei 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 Varanus macraei, Wikidata item Q882602. 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.
