The Endemic Hispaniolan Lizard Genus Chamaelinorops

Abstract

Variation, natural history, and distribution of Chamaelinorops barbouri on His- paniola are given; no subspecies are recognized, although variation suggests that there may be two populations that have differentiated. Schmidt (1919) named a new genus and species of iguanid lizard Chamaelinorops barbouri ostensibly from Navassa Island, between Hispaniola and Jamaica. The species was based upon two specimens in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History that had been collected by Rollo H. Beck in 1917. Apparently no further information or specimens of Chamaelinorops became available until Alexander Wetmore secured a third specimen in 1927 at Fond des Negres, Departement du Sud, Haiti. This specimen, in the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, served as the holotype of Chamaelinorops wetmorei Cochran (1928); the genus was thus known from two populations, one from Navassa Island, the other from the Hispaniolan south (sensu Williams, 1961) on the Tiburon Peninsula in Haiti. Thomas (1966) examined 10 additional specimens (exclusive of the holotype and paratype of C. barbouri); these few specimens were all that had accumulated in the period between 1927 and 1966. It seemed that Chamaelinorops is a rare or at least very uncommon lizard. Thomas (1966) also showed that there appeared to be no native population of these lizards on Navassa, an island which he had visited and which appeared to be ecologically unsuitable for Chamaelinorops. He did suggest, on the meager material then available, that barbouri and wetmorei were subspecifically related, with the former occurring in the Massif de la Hotte in the extreme west of the Tiburon Peninsula, the latter in the extreme eastern portion of that range, as well as in the Haitian Massif de la Selle and the Dominican Sierra de Baoruco. He presented evidence that in fact the Beck