Urosaurus Hallowell

Castiglia, Riccardo, Annesi, Flavia, Bezerra, Alexandra M. R., García, Andrés & Flores-Villela, Oscar, 2010, Cytotaxonomy and DNA taxonomy of lizards (Squamata, Sauria) from a tropical dry forest in the Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve on the coast of Jalisco, Mexico, Zootaxa 2508, pp. 1-29 : 15

Genus Urosaurus Hallowell

The genus includes nine species distributed in the southwestern United States of America and western Mexico, from southern Wyoming to northern Mexico along the border of USA and Mexico, and on the Pacific coast from Sonora, south entering the Balsas Basin to eastern Chiapas. Phylogenetic relationships between species have been assessed only on morphological grounds and with a single allozyme character by Wiens (1993). Only three species have been karyotyped: U. graciosus ( Hall 1965; Gorman 1973), U. nigricaudus (Gorman et al. 1969) , and U. ornatus ( Porter et al. 1994) . All these species have a similar karyotype, 2n = 34, with 12 macrochromosomes of metacentric morphology and 22 microchromosomes.