Authors
MARK A PAULIssEN, JAMEs M WALKER, JAMEs E CoRDE
Description
Cnemidophorus tesselatus is a complex of par-thenogenetic whiptail lizards that occurs in dry, open habitats from the Trans-Pecos region of Texas and adjacent Mexico northward to southeastern Colorado (Stebbins, 1985). All C. tesse-latus are female and reproduce without fertilization to produce individuals that are genetically identical to their sisters and their mother. There are several diploid and several triploid lineages; these have been assigned to distinct “pattern class-es,” designated by capital letters, by Zweifel (1965). The triploids occur only in southeastern Colorado, as do the northernmost populations of diploid pattern classes C and D (Zweifel, 1965; Parker and Selander, 1976; Walker et al., 1990). Most previous studies of the ecology of C. tes-selatus have been conducted either in Texas (Mil-stead, 1957, 1958; Scudday and Dixon, 1973;
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