This species of lizard lives in tropical evergreen forests at heights of over 1000 meters in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum.

A Pseudocalotes ziegleri lizard (photo: Nguyen Quang Truong).

The new species belongs to the Pseudocalotes family and it is named after German professor Thomas Ziegler, who has had many research works about reptiles and amphibians in Vietnam.

This is the fifth lizard species uncovered in Vietnam since 2004. The four other species include Acanthosaura nataliae (2006), Bronchocela orlovi (2004), Brochocela vietnamensis (2005), and Pseudocophotis kontumensis (2007).

The standard specimen was collected by scientists during a joint research program on biodiversity between the Institute for Ecology and Biological Resources, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Saint Petersburg Institute for Zoology (Russia).

VietNamNe/VNE