Three New Lizards Found in Threatened South American Rainforests

The Chocó rainforest in Ecuador is so incredibly diverse that even though 90 percent of it has been cleared for agriculture, researchers can still find new species in what remains. Researchers have discovered a new species of wood lizard in the Chocó, as announced in a paper that was just published in the open access journal Zookeys, along with two more lizard species found in a threatened and mismanaged forest in neighboring Peru.

Under the genus name "Enyaliodes," the number of known species of wood lizard has nearly doubled since 2006. The lizards are found on the once isolated slopes of the tropical Andes, one of the most diverse environments in the world. Spanning from Venezuela down to the Tropic of Capricorn, this hot spot boasts an estimated 30,000-35,000 different species of vascular plants—10 percent of all the world's species—and more than 600 reptile species.

The latest three discoveries are pictured below, in order of where they were found from north to south:

This is the male and female Enyalioides altotambo, from northern Ecuador near the Colombian border, as photographed by Luis A. Coloma. It's clear why its relative, Enyalioides heterolepis, was known as "Bocourt's dwarf iguana." The green-colored members of the genus really look like little iguanas.

This is Enyalioides anisolepis, from the Peruvian-Ecuadorian border, photographed by Omar Torres-Carvajal, who clearly is the man to go to for swimsuit posed lizard specimen. The suggested name for this one is "rough-scaled wood lizard," and it is noted for its "marked sexual dichromatism," meaning males and females have very different coloring.

Finally, the standout of the group, Enyalioides sophiarothschildae, as shot by Pablo J. Venegas.

While they were found far apart, study co-author Kevin de Queiroz told me in an email that the other species of wood lizards fill in the sizable gap between the low-elevation Chocoan tropical rainforest, where the E. altotambo was found, and the higher elevations and cooler temperatures of the Selva Alta, where the two other species live.

While the lizards had been living in isolation long enough not to be noticed, de Queiroz told me that both E. altotambo and E. anisolepis were found close to encroaching disturbed areas of the forest.

"Unfortunately, many tropical forests are threatened by human activities," de Queiroz said. "As for the lizards, we still don't know enough about their distributions to know how threatened they are, but if deforestation is not kept in check, that will almost certainly be bad for these lizards."

Hopefully unlike the unfortunate skinks that were found in the Caribbean just as they were going extinct, finding the new species now will give environmentalists some head start, because even with now 15 types of wood lizards known, it would still be terrible to lose one.