Abronia (animal)

Green tree worm ( Abronia graminea )

Sneak tree ( Abronia ) are an arboreal species of Squamata, which is found in southern North America and northern Central America. The range extends from the northwestern Mexican state of Tamaulipas on the central highlands of Mexico to Honduras and to the north of El Salvador.

Features

Sneak tree are stocky to slender lizards, reaching a total length of 25 to 35 cm, which serves as a grasping organ tail makes up half times to double the head-body length. In contrast to the European legless slow worm own tree crawl, like all members of the subfamily of the Crocodile and Alligator Crawl ( Gerrhonotinae ), strong front and hind legs. Body and head are significantly flattened and covered with large, reinforced with osteoderms shed. The head is triangular in plan view. The members of the subgenus Auriculabronia have thornlike extended scales above the ear opening.

Sneak tree are more colorful than other colored crawl. Some are green, others black and white or black and yellow spotted. Often, the head has orange-red spots. The coloring is used but in all cases the camouflage and the dappled drawings make the lizard on moss and lichen mats almost invisible. Young animals are usually inconspicuous and often have a pattern of dark transverse bands on the back side.

Habitat

Almost all tree Sneak species live in the mountains in primary forests at altitudes between 1500 and 3000 meters. It's cloud forests and pine-oak mixed forest whose trees are heavily covered with epiphytes, especially with bromeliads plants. Only the two occurring in southern Mexico species of the subgenus Scopaeabronia, A. and A. bogerti chiszari inhabit tropical rain forest at lower altitudes. Larger areas of distribution have only the northern species that live by Tamaulipas to Oaxaca. All other live in very restricted areas, which often contain only a small mountain range or a volcano. The species are isolated from each other by intervening lowlands. A syntopes occurrence is known only in a case where A. fimbriata and A. gaiophantasma that colonize together the cloud forest in the Sierra de las Minas in eastern Guatemala.

Way of life

Sneak tree are tree dwellers and difficult to observe in their natural environment. Some species are regularly on the ground, while others to avoid contact with the ground. Bromeliads, moss and lichen mats serve them as a resting place and also their main food, various arthropods are captured mainly in bromeliads. Much like chameleons Baum Sneak move to camouflage extremely slow in general and rock in their motion as a motion by the wind plant part. Only the prey capture is done by a quick thrust. They are territorial and during the mating season the males carry heavy fighting from. All species whose mode of reproduction is known, are viviparous. One to 17 young are born per litter, the most common is a litter size of four pups.

Species

  • Abronia anzuetoi Campbell & Frost, 1993
  • Abronia aurita Cope, 1869
  • Abronia bogerti Tihen, 1954
  • Abronia campbelli Brodie & Savage 1993
  • Abronia chiszari Smith & Smith, 1981
  • Abronia deppii ( Wiegmann, 1828)
  • Abronia fimbriata Cope 1884
  • Abronia frosti Campbell, Sasa, Acevedo & Mendelson 1998
  • Abronia fuscolabialis ( Tihen, 1944)
  • Abronia gaiophantasma Campbell & Frost 1993
  • Abronia graminea ( Cope, 1864)
  • Abronia leurolepis Campbell & Frost, 1993
  • Abronia lythrochila Smith & Alvarez del Toro, 1963
  • Abronia martindelcampoi Flores - Villela & Sánchez -H., 2003
  • Abronia matudai ( Hartweg & Tihen, 1946)
  • Abronia meledona Campbell & Brodie 1999
  • Abronia mitchelli Campbell, 1982
  • Abronia mixteca Bogert & Porter, 1967
  • Abronia montecristoi Hidalgo 1983
  • Abronia oaxacae ( Günther, 1885)
  • Abronia ochoterenai ( Martín del Campo, 1939)
  • Abronia ornelasi Campbell, 1984
  • Abronia ramirezi Campbell 1994
  • Abronia reidi Werl & Shannon, 1961
  • Abronia salvadorensis Hidalgo 1983
  • Abronia smithi Campbell & Frost, 1993
  • Abronia taeniata ( Wiegmann, 1828)

Endangering

Due to the very small area of ​​distribution of most species tree Crawl are extremely vulnerable due to deforestation and scientists assume that some of the described species are already extinct and other species will disappear in the coming decades. Also it is assumed that some species are already extinct before they were known to science.

John Edward Gray Rainforest
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