''Acanthocercus annectans'', the Eritrean rock agama or Eritrean ridgeback agama, is a species of lizard in the family

Agamidae Agamidae is a family containing 582 species in 64 genera of iguanian lizards indigenous to Africa, Asia, Australia, and a few locations in Southern Europe. Many species are commonly called dragons or dragon lizards. Overview Phylogenetically ...

Description

The Eritrean rock agama has irregular black lines and a white line down the centre of the line.Observations on the geology and zoology of Abyssinia, made during the progress of the British expedition to that country in 1867-68 It’s scales are small, and it’s head is subtriangular, and flat. It’s nose is blunt, ended by a rostral scale, and the frenal region being depressed. The tail is longer then the body and head, and the chin is covered in small rhomboidal scales decreasing in size.

Habitat and Ecology

The Eritrean rock agama lives in

forests A forest is an ecosystem characterized by a dense community of trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological functio ...

savannas A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) biome and ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the Canopy (forest), canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient li ...

, inland wetlands, inland cliffs and mountain peaks. They live in loose groups with large males often sharing living spaces. They eat insects and arthropods, most of it being ants.

Conservation

The species is listed as

Least Concern A least-concern species is a species that has been evaluated and categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as not being a focus of wildlife conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wil ...

with the species being quite abundant and populations being stable. This species is still threatened by logging and annual and perennial non-timber crops.

References

Acanthocercus Reptiles described in 1870 Taxa named by William Thomas Blanford Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN {{Agamidae-stub