290 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol. iie 



Shuman's Ranch (UMMZ 86617); El Morro Nat. Mon. (KUMNH 11298-9*); 

 Ojo Redondo (CU 5707); Mt. Sedgwick (USNM 44506); McCartey's (USNM 

 16000-1); Lava Beds (USNM 44702). 



Cnemidophorus velox Springer 



Lowe and Zweifel (1952, p. 229) have characterized appropriately 

 the systematics of whiptail lizards: "Perhaps there is no genus of 

 lizard occurring in North America today that has been studied and 

 continues to be studied with as much uncertainty and confusion as 

 Cnemidophorus." In keeping with this statement, C. velox was, for 

 many years, an unrecognized species. Probably it was reported in 

 New Mexico by Yarrow (1875, p. 558) as C. octolineatus and by 

 Hallowell (1854, p. 145), Cope (1900, p. 603), and VanDenburgh 

 (1924, p. 213) as C. gularis. Burt (1931, p. 124) included it under C. 

 sexlineatus perplexus and listed Zuni specimens from Grants and 

 Gallup. Lowe (1955a) reviewed the nomenclatorial history of this 

 Colorado Plateau species that Burger (1950a, p. 4) and others had 

 confused with C. exsanguis, formerly known as C. sacki (Duellman 

 and Zweifel, 1962). Maslm and others (1958, p. 342) reported C. 

 velox from San Juan, Taos, Rio Arriba, and San Miguel Counties, 

 New Mexico. Duellman and Zweifel (1962, fig. 10) utilized my 

 distributional data on this species in their review of the "sexlineatus" 

 group of Cnemidophorus. 



C. velox may be separated from C. exsanguis primarily on the basis 

 of size and color pattern (pi. 3; table 7). Adults of the former are 

 never spotted conspicuously, have more widely separated paraverte- 

 bral light stripes and predominantly blue or blue-gray tails in con- 

 trast to the spotted brown to greenish (distaUy) tailed adults of C. 

 exsanguis. The two species are similar in scutellation (table 7). They 

 are sympatric presumably in northern Arizona (Lowe, 1955a, p. 3), 

 but this relationship is not certain in the Zunis. On two occasions a 

 large seemingly spotted whiptail was seen foraging with typical 

 adults of C. velox near Thoreau. Neither individual was collected, 

 and other differences were not noted. Since some large C. velox 

 develop light areas at the anterior ends of adjoining scales in the 

 lateral dark stripes, these observations cannot be cited as indicating 

 sympatry in the Zunis. 



Among the striped whiptails of New Mexico west of the Rio Grande, 

 the scale counts of C. velox are closest to those of C. exsanguis and 

 furthest from C. perplexus and C. inornatus; such features adequately 

 separate C. velox from C. burti, a much larger spotted species (table 7). 

 Unlike C. velox, C. perplexus is spotted as an adult and often has a 

 wavy middorsal light stripe. C. velox and C. inornatus are the only 

 unspotted species in western New Mexico. Both have blue tails, but 

 C. inornatus is not larger than 67 mm. snout-vent, typically has a 



