The Dunes Sagebrush Lizard

The Dunes Sagebrush Lizard (Sceloporus arenicolus) is endemic to the Mescalero and Monahans Sand-Shinnery Oak ecosystems of southeastern New Mexico and adjacent Texas. This species relies on a mix of open sand dunes and shinnery oak dominated habitat types. It is a dynamic, heterogeneous landscape with topographic complexity and human activities have destroyed and fragmented the landscape over the last several decades. With colleagues at Texas A&M, we study the effects of both evolutionary and more recent anthropogenic factors on phylogeographic differentiation, population connectivity, and population persistence in this unique landscape. This includes range-wide phylogeographic data as well as fine-scale population genetic data, and the integration of these data with landscape and population ecology data.

Collaborators: Lee Fitzgerald, Toby Hibbitts, Dan Leavitt, Wade Ryberg, Danielle Walkup

	The Dunes Sagebrush Lizard relies on a mosaic of sand dune blowouts (sandy depressions clear of vegetations) and shinnery oak (Quercus havardii) expanses for reproduction and survival. See image to left.
Herbicide treatment and oil and gas mining have altered the landscape considerably. The former converts shinnery oak habitat to grass and mesquite dominated landscape that lacks the vegetative cover and microhabitat structure important to S. arenicolus persistence. Well pad and road construction associated with oil and gas mining destroys and fragments habitat.
Above: Aerial photographs from Google Earth. In all photos, the cresent shaped patches are sand dune blowouts that are potential S. arenicolus habitat. (A) intact habitat, (B) habitat once treated with herbicided (light colored patch), and (C) wellpads and roads in suitable S. arenicolus habitat.