Eastern Glass Lizard: Dark-Dashed, Side-Grooved, White-Green Body

Summary: Grassy, woody coastal plain North American eastern glass lizard habitats get dark-dashed, green-white, legless, side-grooved, white-yellow-bellied bodies.

eastern glass lizard (Ophisaurus ventralis) with regrown tail; Winter Park, north central Orange County, east central Florida; Monday, July 9, 2007: pondhawk, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

North American eastern glass lizard habitats assemble into distribution ranges from southeastern Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina through much of Georgia and Alabama, all of Florida and southeastern Mississippi and Louisiana.

Eastern glass lizards bear their common name as southeastern coastal plain dwellers with shatterable tails and as legless, snake-like, worm-like anguid lizards in the Anguidae family. The scientific name Ophisaurus ventralis carries the English equivalent of "snake-lizard [that crawls on its] belly" because of leglessness, scales and slithering ground-level and underground coverage. Scientific designations delve into descriptions in 1766 by Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778), Småland-born Swedish professor of botany and medicine, publisher, taxonomist and zoologist.

Eastern glass lizard life cycles expect southern coastal plain broadleaved open woodlands, damp grasslands, hardwood hammocks, pine flatwoods, sun-basking pavement, posts and stumps and underground burrows.

May through August flourish in eastern glass lizard life cycles as breeding seasons whose timing finds overlaps with related inland and slender glass lizard mating periods.

Eastern glass lizards go from burrows deep underground for early morning thermoregulating (body temperature-adjusting) sun-basking atop heat-absorbing pavement and rocks and sunlit logs, posts and stumps. External ear openings, mobile tongues, shape-shifting crystalline lenses and sharp-toothed lower and upper jaws help them hunt once they have their body temperature at optimum range. Biting typically is not included among defenses of inundating human predators, natural enemies and rival lizards with excrement and with writhing tips from easily shattered tails.

Agro-industrialists, breeders, collectors, polluters and predatory foxes, raccoons, raptors, skunks and snakes jeopardize bushy, forested, grassy, sandy, scrubby, shrubby, woody North American eastern glass lizard habitats.

Eastern glass lizard females keep laying calcium carbonate-shelled, internally fertilized, pale, 0.85-inch (21.5-millimeter) by 0.52-inch (13.1-millimeter) eggs in 7- to 17-egg clutches between June and September.

Incubation locks mothers-to-be into the locations where they lay, and lace themselves around, each breeding season's clutches until two-month-old embryos leave their eggs as newborn hatchlings. Embryos mature through gas exchanges and waste removals by allantois membranes, oxygen permeability of chlorion coverings, nutrients in yolk sacs and shock-absorbing moisture in amniotic membranes. Ambushed, arboreal, crawling, day-active, flying, stalked, terrestrial ants, beetles, centipedes, cockroaches, crickets, flies, gnats, grasshoppers, millipedes, mosquitoes, moths, slugs, snails, spiders, termites and weevils nourish adults.

North American eastern glass lizard habitats offer season-coldest temperature ranges, north to southward, from 5 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 to minus 6.66 degrees Celsius).

Blackland prairies, broadleaf, coastal, conifer, lowland and mixed forests, everglades, flooded grasslands, meadows and savannahs, hammocks, marshes, pine-sheltered sandy scrublands and rocklands protect eastern glass lizards.

Eighteen to 42.63 inches (45.72 to 108.28 centimeters) queue up as physically and sexually mature total lengths whereas dark-, dual-striped backs qualify as khaki-bodied juvenile hallmarks. Adults reveal bone-armored, black-green-white-speckled, dry-scaled, legless, stiff, white-yellow-bellied bodies with black head-to-tail dashes, dainty heads, flexible, lengthwise-grooved, unmarked sides, white-edged neck scales and white-yellow tail undersides. Movable eyelids, nictitating membranes, shape-shifting crystalline lenses and two cornea-moisturizing glands and vibration-sensitive tympanic membranes, tympanic cavity bones, Eustachian tubes and pharynxes sort sights and sounds.

Legless, small-headed bodies with black-dashed, black-green-white-speckled backs, grooved sides, white-edged necks, ear openings and movable eyelids twist through southern coastal North American eastern glass lizard habitats.

range map for eastern glass lizard (Ophisaurus ventralis): rbrausse; IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

eastern glass lizard (Ophisaurus ventralis) with regrown tail; Winter Park, north central Orange County, east central Florida; Monday, July 9, 2007: pondhawk, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/38686613@N08/4750257621/

Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013, "Map of the geographic distribution of Ophisaurus ventralis (Native: United States / Present -- origin uncertain: Cayman Islands)," with range data from Hammerson, G.A. 2007. Ophisaurus ventralis. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.2. www.iucnredlist.org. Downloaded on 23 January 2013, @ https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/63721/12710178: rbrausse; IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ophisaurus_ventralis_distribution.png

For further information:

Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 7, Reptiles, edited by Michael Hutchins, James B. Murphy, and Neil Schlager. Farmington Hills MI: Gale Group, 2003.

Linnaeus. 1766. "349. Anguis ventralis." Systema Naturae per Regna Tria Naturae, Secundum Classes, Ordines, Genera, Species, cum Characteribus, Differentiis, Synonymis, Locis. Tomus I: 391. Editio Duodecima, Reformata. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42946587

Uetz, Peter. "Ophisaurus ventralis (Linnaeus, 1766)." Reptile Database.
Available @ http://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/species?genus=Ophisaurus&species=ventralis&search_param=%28%28search%3D%27ophisaurus+ventralis%27%29%29

USARK - United States Association of Reptile Keepers @UnitedStatesAssociationOfReptileKeepers. 13 November 2013. "Eastern glass lizard (Ophisaurus ventralis)." Twitter.
Available @ https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=538894852859139