A Guide to the Amphibians
and Reptiles of California

Elgaria multicarinata webbii - San Diego Alligator Lizard

Click on a picture for a larger view

Range in California: Green

Click the map for a guide
to the other subspecies

Adult, Kern County

Underside of Adult, Kern County
(Dark markings run through the
middle of the scales.)

Adult missing most of its tail, San Diego County

Adult, Tehachapi Mountains, Kern County

Underside of Adult, Kern County
(Dark markings run through the
middle of the scales.)

Adult, 6,200 ft., San Bernardino Mountains, San Bernardino County

Adult San Bernardino County, missing most of tail

Adult, San Gabriel Mountains, Los Angeles County. © Mike Ryan

Adult, San Gabriel Mountains, Los Angeles County

Adult, Riverside County

Adult, Orange County © K. S. Swigart

Juvenile, Laguna Mountains, San Diego County, © Stuart Young

Adult, Yosemite Valley, Mariposa County © Olly Burrows

Adult, Placer County, with a forked re-generated tail. © Sara Walhovd

Adult, Santa Catalina Island
© Nathan Smith

The eye of this species is light, compared to the northern alligator lizard.

Adult males have a large triangular head.

The San Diego AL is the longest subspecies of Southern Alligator Lizard, especially when an adult has a complete tail which has never broken off: Steve Haimwertz found this 15 inch lizard in his backyard in Los Angeles County.
© Steve Haimwertz.

Gary Grantham sent in this picture of an even longer lizard found in San Diego County that measures over 16 inches in length including the tail.
© Gary Grantham

6-year-old lizard wrangler Enzo Forte holds a sub-adult alligator lizard that he found trying to kill and eat a potato bug in Ventura County. The lizard continued even after being picked up and struggled with the bug for about an hour before finally severing the bug's head.
© Domiane Forte.

Alligator lizards are good climbers, using their somewhat prehensile tail to hold on, but they aren't easy to spot in trees since they blend in well with the branches. This adult with a very long intact tail frequents this Mulberry tree in Tulare County.
© Sylvia Durando

Juveniles

Hatchling in September, Orange County. © Paul Hanson

Juvenile, Los Angeles County. © Anne Vanoppen

A juvenile with very little pattern from San Diego County. © Richard Cazares

Juvenile, San Diego County
© Sandra Wagner

Unusual Patterns

Melanistic adult male, coastal Los Angeles County. © Jean Taves

Young adult with high-contrast pattern, coastal Los Angeles County
© Don Huffman

Young adult with few markings, coastal Los Angeles County
© Don Huffman

Breeding Behavior

Liz Kubalek © found these mating lizards in this postion one March evening in San Diego County. They were still there the next morning, but gone by the afternoon.

A pair mating in March, San Bernardino County © Joy Lutz-Mizar

A pair mating in April, San Bernardino County © Aaron Fitzsimmons

This mating pair was found in Los Angeles County. © Steve Haimwertz.

Tess Prenger © found these mating lizards in her yard on February 8th in San Diego County.

One March morning, Carola Bundy © photographed these two males biting onto the head of a female on her porch in Los Angeles County. By the afternoon, the smaller lizard on the left was gone and the other two had moved to the driveway.

Bret Gross © found this frisky pair in his Orange County yard in early March.

This pair was found mating in a garage in San Diego County in early April.
© Jason Rosenberg

Predators

Mark McCormick © shot this series of a San Diego Alligator Lizard biting onto the neck of a lizard-eating California Striped Racer in San Bernardino County. After the lizard finally let go, the snake quickly raced up a steep 15 foot high cliff up into some branches.

Sean Kelly © shot this amazing series of pictures that show a fearless San Diego Alligator Lizard successfully defending itself from an attacking American Crow.

Habitat

Habitat, 6,200 ft.
San Bernardino County

Habitat, coastal Riverside County

Habitat, Yosemite Valley,
Mariposa County

Habitat, riparian canyon, Los Angeles County

Habitat, San Gabriel Mountains, Los Angeles County

Habitat, Tehachapi Mountains, Kern County

Habitat, San Diego County coastal scrub

Habitat, San Gabriel Mountains, Los Angeles County

Habitat, coastal San Diego County.
(This location was bulldozed and developed a few years later.)

Creekside habitat, 1,450 ft., Kern County

Short Videos

A large adult San Diego Alligator lizard with a full tail sticks out his tongue in Kern County. Here you can see how an alligator lizard can look a lot like a snake when it crawls through the grass.

This video shows how an alligator lizard's tail thrashes around after it has been dropped to distract a predator. The tail moved for about 4-5 minutes, which has been cut down here to about a minute, showing several different speeds until it is just barely moving.

Description

Size

E. multicarinata ranges from 2 7/8 - 7 inches in snout to vent length (7.3 - 17.8 cm) (Stebbins) and up to aprox.16 inches (38.1 cm) in total length, including the tail. E. m. webbii is the largest subspecies of Southern Alligator Lizard.

Appearance

Alligator lizards, genus Elgaria, are members of the family Anguidae, a family of lizards found in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Large bony scales, a large head on an elongated body and powerful jaws probably give the lizards their common name. They are characterized by a slim body with short limbs and long tail. The tail can reach twice the length of its body if it has never been broken off and regenerated.

Color is brown, grey, or yellowish above, sometimes with reddish or orange coloring on the middle of the back.
Usually there are 9 - 13 dark bands on the back, sides, and tail, with adjacent white spots. On some lizards these dark bands are very pronounced, on others they are covered with reddish or yellowish color. Scales are keeled on the back, sides, and legs, with 14 rows of scales across the back at the middle of the body. The scales of this subspecies are more heavily keeled than with other subspecies, with the temporal scales also keeled.

A band of small granular scales separates the larger bone-reinforced scales on the back and on the belly, creating a fold along each side. These folds allow the body to expand to hold food, eggs, or live young. The fold contracts when the extra capacity is not needed.

The eyes are light yellow. (Compare with the darker eyes of Elgaria coerulea.)
The head is usually mottled with dark color. The head of a male is broader than a female's with a more triangular shape.
Usually there are dark lines running lengthwise on the underside which run through the middle of the scales. (Compare with the underside lines on Elgaria coerulea, which run between the scales, along their edges.)
Young lack the dark barring with a plain copper or brown band on the back.

Behavior

Active during the day, crepuscular and nocturnal during hot weather. Inactive during cold periods in winter.
Moves with a snake-like undulating motion. A good swimmer, sometimes diving into the water to escape by swimming away.
The slightly prehensile tail can be used to wrap around vegetation when climbing. The tail of an alligator lizard is easily broken off, as it is with many lizards. The tail will grow back, although generally not as perfectly as the original. A lizard may detach its tail deliberately as a defensive tactic. When first detached, the tail will writhe around for several minutes, long enough to distract a hungry predator from the lizard.
Other defensive tactics used by alligator lizards are smearing the contents of the cloaca on the enemy and biting. Males sometimes also extrude the hemipenes when threatened.

Alligator lizards are generally secretive, tending to hide in brush or under rocks, although they are often seen foraging out in the open or on roads in the morning and evening. They are common inhabitants of suburban yards and garages.(I have received many emails asking me to identify alligator lizards found in yards and garages, especially in Southern California.)

Diet

Eats a variety of small invertebrates. Will also eat small lizards and small mammals. Occasionally feed on bird eggs and young birds. (Stebbins)

Reproduction

Mating occurs in Spring, most likely from March through May. Eggs are laid some time from May to July and they hatch during late summer and early fall. Young are born fully-formed.

Range

The subspecies Elgaria multicarinata webbii ranges from the border in San Diego County, north, primarily west of the transverse mountain ranges, to an intergrade range in Ventura County, and north along the Tehachapi mountains and the Sierra foothills to roughly Sacramento County. Also ranges north on the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains through the Owens valley where it is found in some isolated populations at Grant Lake, the Alabama Hills near Independence, Walker pass, and Walker Creek near Olancha. Also found in the Mojave Desert along the Mojave River, and on Santa Catalina and San Nicolas Islands. (Stebbins)

The species Elgaria multicarinata ranges from southern Washington mostly west of the Cascades and Sierras into northwestern Baja California, including some of the Channel Islands, and has been introduced into Las Vegas. (Apparently it is common in casino gardens.) In his 2003 field guide, Stebbins states that this species occurs from sea level to 5,000 ft. (1,524 m), but I have seen them at 6,200 ft. and there are unconfirmed reports of their occurrance as high as 8,000 ft.

Habitat

Grassland, open forest, chaparral. Common in foothill oak woodlands. Commonly found hiding under rocks, logs, boards, trash, other surface cover.

Taxonomic Notes

Formerly placed in the genus Gerrhonotus, with the Latin name Gerrholotus multicarinatus multicarinatus.

The SSAR Herpetological Circular No. 37, Crother et al., 2008, includes the following information about E. multicarinata subspecies:

"A molecular phylogeographic study of Feldman and Spicer (2006, Mol. Ecol. 15: 2201–2222) failed to support currently recognized subspecies boundaries within E. multicarinata (Fitch, 1938, Am. Midl. Nat. 20: 381–424). Haplotypes from the central Coast Ranges of California (formerly multicarinata) are more closely related to those from southern (webbii) rather than northern (multicarinata) California, while haplotypes from the Sierra Nevada (formerly webbii) are more closely related to those from northern (multicarinata) rather than southern (webbii) California. In addition, haplotypes representing E. m. multicariniata and E. m. scincicauda are phylogenetically intermixed, calling their separation into question."

Conservation Issues (Conservation Status)

None.

Taxonomy
Family	Anguidae	Alligator Lizards & Allies
Genus	Elgaria	Western Alligator Lizards
Species	multicarinata	Southern Alligator Lizard
Subspecies	webbii	San Diego Alligator Lizard
Original Description
Elgaria multicarinata - (Blainville, 1835) - Nouv. Ann. Mus. Hist. Nat. Paris, Vol. 4, p. 298, pl. 25, fig. 2 Elgaria multicarinata webbii - (Baird, 1858) - Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, Vol. 10, p. 255 from Original Description Citations for the Reptiles and Amphibians of North America © Ellin Beltz
Meaning of the Scientific Name
Elgaria - obscure - possibly named for an "Elgar" or a pun on "alligator." multicarinata - Latin multi many, and carinata keeled - refers to the keeled scales webbii - honors Webb, Thomas H. from Scientific and Common Names of the Reptiles and Amphibians of North America - Explained © Ellin Beltz
Alternate Names
Formerly Gerrhonotus multicarinatus webbii
Related or Similar California Lizards
E. c. coerulea - San Francisco Alligator Lizard E. c. palmeri - Sierra Alligator Lizard E. c. shastensis - Shasta Alligator Lizard E. c. principis - Northwestern Alligator Lizard E. m. multicarinata - California Alligator Lizard E. m. scincicauda - Oregon Alligator Lizard E. panamintina - Panamint Alligator Lizard
More Information and References
Natureserve Explorer California Dept. of Fish and Game Stebbins, Robert C. A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians. 3rd Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. Behler, John L., and F. Wayne King. The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles and Amphibians. Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. Powell, Robert., Joseph T. Collins, and Errol D. Hooper Jr. A Key to Amphibians and Reptiles of the Continental United States and Canada. The University Press of Kansas, 1998. Bartlett, R. D. & Patricia P. Bartlett. Guide and Reference to the Turtles and Lizards of Western North America (North of Mexico) and Hawaii. University Press of Florida, 2009. Jones, Lawrence, Rob Lovich, editors. Lizards of the American Southwest: A Photographic Field Guide. Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2009. Smith, Hobart M. Handbook of Lizards, Lizards of the United States and of Canada. Cornell University Press, 1946.

Conservation Status
The following status listings come from the Special Animals List which is published several times each year by the California Department of Fish and Game. This animal is not included on the Special Animals List, which indicates that there are no significant conservation concerns for it in California.
Organization	Status Listing
U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA)	None
California Endangered Species Act (CESA)	None
California Department of Fish and Game	None
Bureau of Land Management	None
USDA Forest Service	None
Natureserve Global Conservation Status Ranks
World Conservation Union - IUCN Red List

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