Sometimes, a second male shows up and we get even more interesting observations! About 9 percent of all observations in our dataset have two males and a female.īecause we have accumulated so many observations, we now know that the southern alligator lizard mating season can start as early as early February in the southern part of the range and continues into early June in the northern part of the range and at higher elevations. Early in the encounter, the two may engage in a bit of a wrestling match (if you see this, please try to get videos). The male bites the female on her neck or head and may hold her this way for several days. But how long might a male maintain the bite hold? We now have four reports of pairs together over 48 hours, with the current record being a pair that were in a bite hold for at least 54 hours in an Orange County, CA backyard in March 2021.ĭuring mating season, males search out females. This is most likely a type of “mate guarding”, in which the male is trying to make sure that no rival males try to mate with the female (but we still have more research to do before we are positive this is what’s happening). However, the male maintains the bite hold for a long time. The actual act of mating likely takes place shortly after the lizards pair up. Lizards can stay paired up for over two days! For example, in 2015, most of the mating activity in Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego Counties took place between March 11 and April 17, but we received no reports for two week-long periods during which large storms swept through the region.ģ. Weather has a big impact on mating activity.Ĭooler and wetter weather can shut down mating activity until conditions improve. Good December rains yield springs with lots of lizard mating activity.Ģ. This suggests that the lizards are responding not just to rainfall, but to early-season rainfall. But, following the wetter 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2022 winters, we received nearly three times as many observations! In 20, Southern California experienced very high rainfall in December and then very little rain in January and February, but we still received a large number of observations. The 2015, 2016, and 2018 mating seasons followed below-average rain seasons, and we received 32–35 observations of southern alligator lizards in the mating position (i.e., the bite hold, shown in the above images).

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED WITH ALL THESE OBSERVATIONS? HERE ARE THREE DISCOVERIES SO FAR.

This result demonstrates the incredible value of community science for studying rarely observed natural history events. We are pretty sure that through community science, we have generated the largest dataset ever on lizard mating. We have now accumulated over 700 observations of mating southern alligator lizards, and over 100 observations of northern alligator lizards (as of February 2023). We started asking people to send us photos and videos of mating pairs. We knew we could get more observations through community science, by crowdsourcing the study of this rarely documented behavior. At that time, in the entirety of the scientific literature, there were only four dates reported for when southern alligator lizards had been observed breeding. In 2015, we realized that we could use crowdsourcing as a way to study mating behavior. Unfortunately, like most other species on this planet, we still have a huge amount to learn about the basic natural history of alligator lizards. Within the ranges of these two alligator lizard species are a handful of major museums, hundreds of universities, and thousands of biologists, so you might think we must know everything there is to know about these relatively common lizards. IN URBAN AREAS, INCLUDING THE GREATER LOS ANGELES AREA, THEY ARE THE MOST WIDESPREAD LIZARDS. photo: Jacob SOUTHERN ALLIGATOR LIZARDS CAN BE FOUND FROM NORTHERN BAJA CALIFORNIA TO SOUTHERN WASHINGTON, AND THEIR CLOSE RELATIVE, THE NORTHERN ALLIGATOR LIZARD, CAN BE FOUND FROM CENTRAL CALIFORNIA TO SOUTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA. Pairs may stay in the bite hold for several days even though mating only takes a small portion of this time. The male is biting the female’s head and neck region this is termed the bite hold. org/observations/73385631 in their front yard in the Valley Village neighborhood of Los Angeles on April 7, 2021. Above Image: A pair of mating southern alligator lizards observed by Jacob, Oscar (age 5), and Mae (age 4).

Sterling wizards lizard