Shaken, not stirred: That’s how fictional secret service agent James Bond prefers his martini. And now there’s a lizard in the Caribbean that shares his name: the James Bond forest lizard, found close to where author Ian Fleming wrote his iconic Bond novels. Researchers recently described the new species alongside 34 others in a 306-page study that has shaken up what researchers understand about Caribbean lizards.
The taxonomy of neotropical forest lizards, those found in Central and South America and the Caribbean islands, remains poorly understood, the study’s authors write. Among these are lizards from the subfamily Celestinae, which prefer humid tropical forest habitats and are mostly only known from the Caribbean Islands.
To shed light on the taxonomy of Celestinae lizards, researchers from Temple University in the U.S. used modern genetic and morphological tools to compare hundreds of lizards collected over past expeditions from the Caribbean, as well as preserved specimens from museums, some of them 200 years old. In doing so, they identified 35 new-to-science Celestinae species. More than half may be threatened with extinction, the researchers estimate. Fourteen species might even be critically endangered and three may be extinct, they say.
“The results revealed a surprising hidden diversity of species, some of which are likely extinct because of human-mediated alterations of habitat and invasive species,” the authors write in the study.
The new-to-science species include the James Bond forest lizard (Celestus jamesbondi), described from a specimen collected back in 1987.
“We found it to be a species new to science after molecular analysis of samples collected and frozen from our earlier expeditions and discovery of morphological differences from other species,” study co-author S. Blair Hedges, also from Temple University, told Mongabay by email.
The lizard, found near Goldeneye, Jamaica, where Fleming wrote the Bond books, can grow to about 7 centimeters (2.8 inches) long, and is predominantly brown with darker markings and a yellow underside. These lizards are considered common in Jamaica, but the authors write that its small range is concerning and additional studies are needed to better understand its population and threats.
It’s important to identify and describe species like the James Bond forest lizard because “the forest habitats of these species are rapidly disappearing, which means that many of these species will become extinct in our lifetimes — soon,” Hedges said.
The lizards also face predation by introduced species such as the Indian mongoose (Urva auropunctat), study co-author Molly Schools said in a statement.
“To fix this problem and stop the deforestation, it is important to know how many species exist and where they are located,” Hedges said, adding, “Many people, including biologists, don’t full appreciate the value of taxonomy. It is the backbone of most biological science, but especially ecology and conservation.”
Banner image of the James Bond forest lizard (Celestus jamesbondi), courtesy of S. Blair Hedges.
This story first appeared on Mongabay
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Mongabay, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
