Reptilia · Squamata
Lepidophyma flavimaculatumDuméril, 1851
Yellow-spotted Night Lizard
Photograph by Juan Cruzado Cortés, CC BY-SA, via iNaturalist
An active by day or night, meat-eating lizard from the Neotropic region, reaching 153 mm snout to vent.
Reptilia › Squamata › Xantusiidae › Lepidophyma
- Grows to
- 153mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 11years
Longer than 97% of all species in Xantusiidae 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 36 to 153 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
41 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
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2012
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 11years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 24.9–26.2°C77–79 °F
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 26.4°C80 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 26.4–27.3°C80–81 °F
Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009, Slavens and Slavens 1999: 11 years; Petzold 2008: 7
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 153mm6 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 91.5mm3.5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 91.5mm3.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 33.85mm1.25 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 33.9mm1.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 72.94g2.6 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 11.3g0.4 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 0.34g0.01 oz
max 153 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
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, saxicolous, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Neotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1980m
- Range size
- 311,585km²
Arthropods (e.g., McCranie 2018; insects, Ramirez-Bautista et al. 2014), mostly ants and termites (Leenders 2019)
McElroy et al. 2008
(e.g., Arenas-Moreno et al. 2018, Zeas and Alvarado 2015)/ nocturnal (Ramirez-Bautista et al. 2014)/primarily nocturnal (McCranie 2018), crepuscular and in overcast days (Leenders 2019)
Terrestrial, Cryptic / saxicolous and arboreal (Ramirez-Bautista et al. 2014), "rotting logs, tree stumps, leaf litter, rock crevices, caves, and even in archaeological ruins." (Arenas-Moreno et al. 2018), terrestrial, saxicolousand arboreal (McCranie 2018), secretive (Camacho and Solorzano 2023)
40-1625 (Ramirez-Bautista et al. 2014), 0-750 (Arenas-Moreno et al. 2018, Leenders 2019, Camacho and Solorzano 2023), near sea level to 1400 (McCranie 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–9eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 0.75per year
- Clutches a year
- 0.5–1per year
8 (Flores-Villela and Rubio-Perez 2008), 3-8 (Ramirez-Bautista et al. 2014), 1-9 (McCranie 2018), up to 6 (Leenders 2019), 4-6 (Zeas and Alvarado 2015)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Scincoidea
- Subspecies
- Lepidophyma flavimaculatum flavimaculatum A. DUMÉRIL 1851 Lepidophyma flavimaculatum ophiophthalmum TAYLOR 1955
- Described by
- Duméril
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1851
- Type locality
- Mexico
Keeping one
2 ft × 2 ft × 2 ft(61 × 61 × 61 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes ground species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 and climbing species at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times snout-vent length.
Recorded both on the ground and climbing, so this is the larger of the two rules in every dimension.
Lives on rock, so stable hard surfaces and basking ledges suit it.
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 6 in (153 mm), at 4 × 4 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 77–79 °F (24.9–26.2 °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.
9kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 73 g, the heaviest recorded for Yellow-spotted Night 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 · adult female, mean
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — 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
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Xantusiidae
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). Lepidophyma flavimaculatum. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/lepidophyma-flavimaculatum
@misc{lepidophyma_flavimaculatum_2026,
title = {Lepidophyma flavimaculatum},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/lepidophyma-flavimaculatum}
}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.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.