The Monserrat chuckwalla,( Sauromalus slevini ) is a species of chuckwalla

Chuckwalla

Chuckwallas are large lizards found primarily in arid regions of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Some are found on coastal islands...

 belonging to the Iguanidae

Iguanidae

Iguanidae is a family of lizards, composed of iguanas and related species.-Classification of Iguanidae:Two different classification schemes have been used to define the structure of this family. These are the "traditional" classification and the classification presented by Frost et al. .Frost et...

 family native to three small islands in the Sea of Cortes.

Taxonomy and etymology

The generic

Genera

Genera is a commercial operating system and development environment for Lisp machines developed by Symbolics. It is essentially a fork of an earlier operating system originating on the MIT AI Lab's Lisp machines which Symbolics had used in common with LMI and Texas Instruments...

 name, sauromalus, is a combination of two Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 words:σαῦρος (sauros) meaning "lizard

Lizard

Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with nearly 3800 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica as well as most oceanic island chains...

". and ομαλυς (omalus) meaning "flat". Its specific name slevini is a Latinized form of Joseph Richard Slevin, curator of Herpetology at the California Academy of Sciences

California Academy of Sciences

The California Academy of Sciences is among the largest museums of natural history in the world. The academy began in 1853 as a learned society and still carries out a large amount of original research, with exhibits and education becoming significant endeavors of the museum during the twentieth...

 from 1928-1957. The species was first described by American herpetologist John Van Denburgh

John Van Denburgh

John Van Denburgh was a U.S. herpetologist from California.He was born in San Francisco and enrolled at Stanford University in 1891. As of 1895, he organized the herpetology department of the California Academy of Sciences. In 1897 he got a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Additionally, he got an M.D...

 in 1922.

The common name Chuckwalla derives from the Shoshone

Shoshone

The Shoshone or Shoshoni are a Native American tribe in the United States with three large divisions: the Northern, the Western and the Eastern....

 word "tcaxxwal" or Cahuilla

Cahuilla

The Cahuilla, Iviatim in their own language, are Indians with a common culture whose ancestors inhabited inland areas of southern California 2,000 years ago. Their original territory included an area of about . The traditional Cahuilla territory was near the geographic center of Southern California...

 "caxwal", transcribed by Spaniards

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 as "chacahuala".

Habitat and location

The species if found on three islands in the Sea of Cortes: Islas Carmen, Coronados and Montserrat. Due to its restricted range it is a CITES protected animal.

Description

The base color on its back is brown or olive green, with a yellow middorsal band but can be spotted, marbled, or cross-banded with red or darker brown. The head, tail and limbs are unicolor, and the tail may be faintly cross-banded with darker brown. The ventral surfaces are dull brown marbled or spotted with dark brown, especially on the throat.

Diet

The Montserrat chuckwalla prefers dwelling in lava flows and rocky areas with nooks and crannies available for a retreat when threatened. These areas are typically vegetated by creosote bush

Creosote bush

Larrea tridentata is known as Creosote bush as a plant, chaparral as a medicinal herb, and as "gobernadora" in Mexico, Spanish for "governess," due to its ability for inhibiting the growth of nearby plants to have more water. In Sonora, it is more commonly called "hediondilla." It is a flowering...

 and cholla

Cholla

Cholla can refer to the following things:* Cholla cacti, a genus of cyllindrically-stemmed cacti* Cholla , a painting horse born in Nevada* Jeolla , former Korean province...

 cacti which form the staple of their diet as the chuckwalla is primarily herbivorous

Herbivore

Herbivores are organisms that are anatomically and physiologically adapted to eat plant-based foods. Herbivory is a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria. More generally, organisms that feed on autotrophs in...

. The chuckwalla also feed on leaves, fruit and flowers of annual

Annual plant

An annual plant is a plant that usually germinates, flowers, and dies in a year or season. True annuals will only live longer than a year if they are prevented from setting seed...

s, perennial plant

Perennial plant

A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives for more than two years. The term is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter lived annuals and biennials. The term is sometimes misused by commercial gardeners or horticulturalists to describe only herbaceous perennials...

s, and even weed

Weed

A weed in a general sense is a plant that is considered by the user of the term to be a nuisance, and normally applied to unwanted plants in human-controlled settings, especially farm fields and gardens, but also lawns, parks, woods, and other areas. More specifically, the term is often used to...

s; insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s represent a supplementary prey if eaten at all.