Natural History

Liolaemus multimaculatus has lot of anatomical and behavioral adaptations to live in the sand. One of the main is the sand-bury behavior (Halloy et al. 1998), and the recently described sand-swimming behavior (Kacoliris in press), that allows lizards to bury inside the sand and to move since one or two meters under the surface. These behaviors were performed mainly to avoid predators.

In Liolaemus multimaculatus the reproductive cycle begins at spring and finish at the ends of the summer. During winter and autumn, lizards remain in hibernation. Clutch size range between 3 to 7 eggs. This lizard shows a diurnal activity in relation to the temperature of the surface. The Sand Dune Lizard shows a bimodal behavior with a low activity in the middle of the day, in relation with the higher temperatures. Regarding diet, Sand Dune Lizard has a generalist insectivorous diet. Main preys are fly’s, spiders and beetles.

Distributional range of Sand Dune Lizard extends along pampas coastal dunes at Buenos Aires and Río Negro Provinces in Argentina (Cei 1993). This region is one of the most endangered regions in South America (Bertonatti and Corcuera 2000). Moreover, Sand Dune Lizard only uses a narrow section of pampas, the sand dunes.

At present time only six dunes sectors of pampas coasts remains in Argentina. Due their importance, these sectors were categorized as “Grassland Valuable Areas for South America” (GVA) (Bilenca and Miñarro 2004). GVA are areas with a reasonable health status. For this reason, these sectors represent areas in which conservation efforts could promote the long term survival of pampas biota.

Inside the dunes, the wide of habitat use of Liolaemus multimaculatus is even to narrow. Sand Dune Lizard prefers those habitats formed by a low to medium vegetation cover, with bunch grasses that lizards use as shelters and some bare sand sectors. These kinds of habitats are more abundant at frontal dunes (the first line of dunes next to the sea). The most common plant species at these sandy habitats are in general grass: Spartina ciliata (espartillo) and Panicum racemosum (tupe). This species avoid very open habitats, because they remain very exposed to predators and, at the same time, they avoid habitats with a high vegetation cover (higher than 50%), because the great density of roots induce the compactation of the sand, impeding the sand-bury and sand-swimming behavior of the lizards (Kacoliris et al. 2008).