Habitat and Range
The beaded lizard is found in the Pacific drainages from Southern Sonora to Southwestern Guatemala and two Atlantic drainages, from Central Chiapas to Southeastern Guatemala. Their habitat is primarily tropical deciduous forest and thorn scrub forest, but are found in pine-oak forest, with elevations from sea level to 1500 meters. In the wild, the animals are only active from April to mid-November, spending about an hour per day above the ground.
The nominate subspecies H. h. horridum is found in Mexico, from Sonora to Oaxaca. The Rio Fuerte beaded lizard (H. h. exasperatum) is found from southern Sonora to northern Sinaloa. The Black beaded lizard ( H. h. alvarezi) is found in the northern Chiapas and the depression of the Río Lagartero in Huehuetenango to northwestern Guatemala. The ranges of these three subspecies overlap, making them sympatric. The Motagua Valley subspecies (H. h. charlesbogerti) is the only allopatric one, separated from the nearest population (H. h. alvarezi) by 250 km of unsuitable habitat. The Motagua Valley beaded lizard is the most endangered of the subspecies if not of all lizards; it is found only in the dry valley of the Río Motagua in the north-east of Guatemala; it is believed less than 200 of these animals exist in the wild.
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