What Does the Yellow Spotted Lizard Eat?
The majority of the yellow spotted lizard’s diet consists of ants, centipedes, flies, scorpions and spiders. The lizard typically waits for prey to come near its microhabitat, but it does go out to hunt when necessary.
Yellow spotted lizards are a species that lives in microhabitats. This means that they live in or near the same spot for their entire life. The populations of the lizards are typically isolated because of this. Their isolation generally has no effect on the population because the majority of the lizards are females who reproduce through a process called parthenogenesis. This means that they do not need a mate to reproduce. Instead, the female lizard’s eggs develop without the aid of sperm from the males. The populations that do have males reproduce sexually. In cases where females reproduce alone, the young are hatched from eggs, while young created through mating are born alive.
The lizards typically live in decaying logs, under piles of leaves, under rocks or in narrow crevices. The lizards are found in the subtropical and tropical rain forests of Central America along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Yellow spotted lizards are identified by their yellow bodies, which are covered by black or brown spots.
