endemic to a single nation

United States

Origin: Native

Regularity: Regularly occurring

Currently: Present

Confidence: Confident

Type of Residency: Year-round

The six-lined race runner is found mostly in the south and south-eastern US, although it ranges into the midwest. There is a northern extension of the range into Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana; explaining their discovery at the Indiana Dunes Bioblitz event in 2009.

The two six-lined race runners found at the Indiana Dunes BioBlitz, were found hiding under a large piece of metal on a rainy day. These small lizards are often found hiding under woody debris, rocks, and boards.

Six-lined race runners are predators. They eat insects, spiders, and land snails. They lick the ground while foraging, which suggests that they use scent to locate their prey.

United States

Rounded National Status Rank: NNR - Unranked

Rounded Global Status Rank: T5 - Secure

Comments: Reeder et al. (2002) examined phylogenetic relationships of the whiptail lizards of the genus Cnemidophorus based on a combined analysis of mitochondrial DNA, morphology, and allozymes. They determined that Cnemidophorus in the traditional sense is paraphyletic and thus in need of nomenclatural revision. Rather than subsume all cnemidophorine species (including Kentropyx) in a single large genus (Ameiva), they proposed a split that placed the North American "Cnemidophorus" clade in the monophyletic genus Aspidoscelis; under this arrangement, South American taxa remain in the genus Cnemidophorus.