. Bulletin of the Natural History Museum Zoology. 72 ARNOLD can be used to generate hypotheses about the habitats and locomo- tory modes of species where these are uninvestigated or incompletely so. Thus the one known specimen of Mesalina ercolinii occurs in the area of Fig. 3 mainly occupied by ground dwelling forms using dense vegetation, an exceptional habitat for an advanced armatured lacertid. The African Poromera fordi has many morphological re- semblances to the east Asian grass lizards, Takydromus, that seem to be related to climbing in vegetation (Arnold, 1997) but, although the
. Bulletin of the Natural History Museum Zoology. 72 ARNOLD can be used to generate hypotheses about the habitats and locomo- tory modes of species where these are uninvestigated or incompletely so. Thus the one known specimen of Mesalina ercolinii occurs in the area of Fig. 3 mainly occupied by ground dwelling forms using dense vegetation, an exceptional habitat for an advanced armatured lacertid. The African Poromera fordi has many morphological re- semblances to the east Asian grass lizards, Takydromus, that seem to be related to climbing in vegetation (Arnold, 1997) but, although the limb pairs of Poromera are not very disparate in length, as expected in a climber, they are distinctly longer than in Takydromus and other scansorial species. This suggests a locomotory difference between the two genera and perhaps indicates that, although Poromera does climb in vegetation, it is also frequently active in open situations, for instance it may run on the ground more extensively than Takydromus. Sexual dimorphism in limb length It will be seen from Table 1 that there is sexual variation in relative length of the hindlimbs, which nearly always appear to be shorter in females. In most cases the apparent difference is slight, but in a number of taxa, it is substantial, the mean adult male hindlimb span in terms of body length sometimes being as much as 12% more than that of females. Marked sexual difference occurs in, among others, Psammodromus hispanicus, Lacerta agilis, L. lepida, L. andreansz- kyi, L. laevis, L. danfordi, Algyroides nigropunctatus, Lacerta perspicillata, Adolfus alleni, Podarcis, Philochortus intermedins, Latastia longicaudata, Pseuderemias mucronata, Mesalina and Ophisops. In many cases, reduced hind limb span in females is associated with raised forelimb/hindlimb ratio, so sexual differences within species follow the general trend among species (Fig. 4). There appear however to be exceptions to this regularity, for instance in Lacerta vivipara.
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