Reptilia · Squamata
Darevskia praticolaEversmann, 1834
Meadow Lizard
Photograph by Kiril Kapustin, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons
A ground-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating lizard from the Saharo-Sindian region, reaching 66 mm snout to vent.
Once published as Darevskia pontica, Lacerta praticola — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Lacertidae › Darevskia
- Grows to
- 66mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 8.5years
Longer than only 44% of all species in Lacertidae anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 35 to 444 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
43 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Near Threatened
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2008
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 8.5years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 29.3–29.6°C85–85 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 29°C
Bogin et al. 1999: 8.5, no longer than 4 in the wild (Dunayev and Orlova 2023)
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 66mm2.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 51.1mm2 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 54mm2.25 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 22.95mm0.9 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 23.4mm0.9 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 6.71g0.24 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.26g0.01 oz
max 66 mm SVL (Feldman et al. 2016)
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland
- Biome
- Temperate Broadleaf & Mixed Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 5–7months
- Region
- Saharo-Sindian
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Lowest it lives · above sea level
- 250m
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2100m
- Range size
- 461,941km²
- Density
- 250–1600per hectare
Invertebrates ("beetles, ants, orthopterans, cicadas, caterpillars, and other small insects, spiders, earthworms, and woodlice" Szczerbak 2003, see also Dunayev and Orlova 2023), gastropods, worms, arachnids and insects (Kamali 2020), see detailed description in Vacheva and Naumov 2022
pontica, inferred from Ljubisavljevic et al. 2008
e.g., Kamali 2020
e.g., Corovic et al. 2018
max 2000 (Speybroeck et al. 2016, Kwet 2015), sea level to 1100 in Bulgaria (Vacheva and Naumov 2022)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 4.3eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–8eggs
- Mean clutch
- 2.88–5.7eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1.5per year
- Clutches a year
- 1–2per year
3-6 (Arakelyan et al. 2011, Speybroeck et al. 2016, Kwet 2015), 2-6, usually 4, also citing 4-8 mean 5.7 (Stojanov et al. 2011), 2-6 (Szczerbak 2003, Dunayev and Orlova 2023), 1-6, 72 eggs in 25 clutches (i.e., mean 2.88, Kidov 2018); for pontica: 4-8, mean 5.7 (Ljubisavljevic et al. 2008 who report min of 2 for another study of Caucasian population of pontica, and other means of 4.4), 3-7 (Kidov and Timoshina 2017), 2-7 for pontica (Kidov 2021)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Laterata
- Subspecies
- Darevskia praticola praticola (EVERSMANN 1834) Darevskia praticola hungarica (SOBOLEWSKY 1930) Darevskia praticola hyrcanica TUNIYEV, DORONIN, KIDOV & TUNIYEV 2011 Darevskia praticola loriensis TUNIYEV, DORONIN, TUNIYEV, AGHASYAN, KIDOV & AGHASYAN 2013 Darevskia praticola pontica (LANTZ & CYRÉN 1918)
- Described by
- Eversmann
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1834
- Type locality
- Russia
Keeping one
10.5 in × 10.5 in × 6.5 in(26 × 26 × 17 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes ground-dwelling species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times snout-vent length.
Mindestanforderungen an die Haltung von Reptilien (Sachverständigengutachten), German Federal Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry, Animal Welfare Division, 10 January 1997. The standard states these floor areas are recommendations rather than binding limits.
From this animal’s own snout-vent length of 2.5 in (66 mm), at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 85–85 °F (29.3–29.6 °C).
Preferred body temperature, recorded in a laboratory gradient where the animal could choose freely. A measurement of the animal, not a setting for a thermostat.
Feeding
A prey item should be no wider than the space between the animal's eyes.
Widely used across reptile husbandry references. The stated reason is that the gap approximates the width of the throat, so wider prey is associated with impaction. This is established practice, not a measurement.
1kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 7 g, the heaviest recorded for Meadow Lizard — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Red List criteria
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
Others in Lacertidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Darevskia praticola. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/darevskia-praticola
@misc{darevskia_praticola_2026,
title = {Darevskia praticola},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/darevskia-praticola}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.