The sand lizard (Lacerta agilis) is a lacertid lizard distributed across most of Europe including Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, southern Sweden, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Romania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Western Russia and eastwards to Mongolia and northwest China. It does not occur in the Iberian peninsula or European Turkey. Its distribution is often patchy.
Description & appearance
The sand lizard is a sexually dimorphic legged lizard. In northwest Europe, both sexes are characterised by lateral and dorsal strips of ocellated (eye-shaped) markings, dark patches with pale centres. Colouration varies across their European and Russian range. Males have finer markings than females, and their flanks turn bright green during the spring mating season, fading again in the late summer. Male adults may reach a total body length of 19.3 cm, where female adults may reach 18.5 cm. It has several subspecies, the westernmost of which is L. a. agilis. In this and the other main western subspecies (L. a. argus), the dorsal stripe is thin and interrupted, or not present at all. This applies particularly to the latter subspecies, which also includes a plain red or brown-backed phase without any dorsal markings. In these two subspecies, only the flanks of the males turn green in the mating season, but in the eastern subspecies (predominantly L. a. exigua), males can be wholly green, even outside the breeding season.
Most of these lizards live in Eastern Europe. They are mostly common in Poland, Czech Republic, and countries around that area. They bask on rocks in the day and at night they go into their holes under ground. To protect themselves, they pop off their tails and bite the predators.
Distribution & habitat
In the UK, the sand lizard is largely restricted to lowland heathlands and sand dunes in Southern England, and to the coastal sand dunes of Northwest England and Wales. It also occupies a range of man-made habitats within these areas, including railway lines, roadsides, brownfield sites and field boundaries. Mating & reproduction
Generally, males reaches sexual maturity at a smaller size compared with females. Vitellogenesis happens when females are 45 days for the whole population. Both sexes tend to lose body fat during mating period, since their main energy resources come from body fat and from the liver and proximal at the tail. After a few weeks from the hibernation, male adults become extremely aggressive towards each other, trying to mate as many as females as they can.
The female sand lizard lays eggs in loose sand in a sunny location, leaving them to be incubated by the warmth of the ground.