REPTILIA: SQUAMATA: ANNIELLIDAE: Anniella

Anniella pulchra Gray, 1852

 California legless lizard

Text & photo at right by Dr. Robert Sprackland. This young adult was collected near Zmudowski State Beach in Moss Landing, Monterey County, California.

Range: California endemic from near the Santa Cruz-Monterey County border south into coastal Baja Mexico. Formerly ranged north to San Francisco.

Diagnosis: A pencil-thin, smooth limbless lizard with moveable eyelids and no external ear openings. There is no lateral groove. The snout is countersunk (lower jaw much shorter than upper) and the belly is invariably some shade of yellow.

Description: Body elongate, slim, and smooth, with no trace of external limbs. Upper snout rounded and blunt, sharp at the tip, and extending well beyond the lower jaw. Ear openings absent. Eyes tiny, pupils round, eyelids present and opaque. Tongue short, broad, and slightly nicked at the tip. Head scales large, the largest being the supralabials. Upper surfaces silvery or gray, with a dark vertebral stripe and a pair of dorsolateral stripes that may be broken. The belly is semi-transparent, and ranges from bright lemon to pinkish yellow. The tail is long, and often regenerated. Autotomy is present.

Reproduction: Legless lizards bear up to six live young. Juveniles are thin and silvery.

Taxonomy & Relationships:  Generally considered to belong to the family Anniellidae, but closely allied to and sometimes included within the Anguidae. It differs from all North American anguids, however, in lacking ear openings and a lateral fold, and in possessing small (vs. enlarged) scales on the body.

There is a dark form that is black or dark brown as an adult that is endemic to the Monterey peninsula and the coastal Moro Bay area. Usually considered a subspecies as Anniella pulchra nigra Fischer, I consider its genetic and phenotypic stability in sympatry with silvery specimens to warrant specific status as Anniella nigra. Juveniles of black legless lizards resemble silvery legless lizards.

Silver legless lizard photographed by Sean McKeown.

Notes:  This is a wide-ranging species common in drier, loose sandy soils, from inland foothills to coastal dunes. The presence of iceplant may reduce the numbers of legless lizards in a community. This species prefers cooler temperatures (60-65° F) and is rarely encountered above ground or near the surface in higher temperatures. Activity is largely crepuscular.  

Though common in some areas, this species is considered a species of special concern, and legal collecting is limited to one specimen per collector.

Holotype: A neotype was designated in 1993 as MVZ 64656.

Literature: Click on book to order a copy

Bezy, R and K. Wright. 1971. Karyotypic variation and relationships of the California legless lizard Anniella pulchra Gray (Reptilia: Anniellidae). Herpetological Review 3(4): 71-75.

Bury, R. Bruce. 1985. Status report: Anniella pulchra nigra Fischer, black legless lizard (Anniellidae: Sauria) in central California. Denver Wildlife Research Center.

Bury, R. Bruce and T. Balgooyen. 1976. Temperature selectiveness in the legless lizard, Anniella pulchra. Copeia 1976(1): 152-155.

International Commission for Zoological Nomenclature. 1993. Opinion 1735. Anniella pulchra Gray, 1852 (Reptilia, Squamata): neotype designated. Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 50(2):186-187.

Miller, Charles. 1944. Ecological relations and adaptations of the limbless lizards of the genus Anniella. Ecological Monographs 14(3): 271-289.

Murphy, Robert and Hobart Smith. 1991. Anniella pulchra Gray, 1852 (Reptilia, Squamata): propose designation of a neotype. Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 48(4):316-318.

Smith, Hobart. 1946. Handbook of lizards; Lizards of the United States and of Canada. Comstock Publishing. ISBN: 0-8014-8236-4.

Stebbins, Robert. 1985. A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians, 2nd edition. Houghton Mifflin Co. ISBN: 0-395-38253-X.