37: Colorado Checkered Whiptail

I write to you from Arapahoe, Ute, and Cheyenne land. I am interested in learning about the different animals that live in the place where I was born. I want to mention that biological classification as taught by western science has its roots in racism, sexism, and transphobia – here’s a good explainer about why.

My dog Nori is a massive fan of today’s animal, which is of a variety that has fascinated him since the first time I took him camping at Chaco Canyon and he spent every waking second (and, based on his sleeping behavior in my one-man tent, every unconscious one too) chasing them: small, fast moving, darting lizards. His paws scrabbled over desert dirt as he frantically leapt and darted after them, but he never had a chance. Today we are going to talk about the Colorado Checkered Whiptail (Aspidoscelis neotesselatus).  

So here’s something fascinating about this lizard right out of the gate: they are an all female species that arose from hybridization of other whiptail species. The Colorado Natural Heritage Program states, “This population of triploid (having three sets of chromosomes instead of the usual two) animals is entirely made up of females, who are able to reproduce parthenogenetically. In parthenogenetic species, reproduction is asexual, and egg cells develop without having been fertilized by male gametes. Consequently, offspring are genetically identical with their mother.”

I am resisting making my second Jurassic Park joke of the week, but I truly did not know there were species of reptiles that could be a single sex. And from reading about this one, I learned that there is also a New Mexico Whiptail lizard species that is also a single sex! If you want to know more, the Wikipedia article on parthenogenesis is a nice place to start.

The Colorado Checkered Whiptail lives in the same area where I saw the Apatosaurus tracks mentioned a few newsletters ago – in the pinyon and juniper dominated canyons and hills around the Arkansas, Purgatoire, Huerfano, and Apishapa river basins, all below about 7000 feet in elevation. They are insectivorous and dig burrows for shelter.