Nobbi Dragon
S2, Female, with Shadows
Nobbi Dragon
S7, Male, Breeding Colours
| Nobbi Dragon S2, Female, with Shadows | | Nobbi Dragon S7, Male, Breeding Colours | | ||
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Chordates (Chordata) - Reptiles (Reptilia) | |||
| Order: | Scaled Reptiles (Squamata) | ||||
| Family: | Dragon (Agamidae) iNaturalist Observation | ||||
| Species: | Nobbi Dragon (Diporiphora nobbi) | ||||
| This Photo: | 🔍S2, Female, Flash Fill🔎 | ||||
| Synonym: | Amphibolurus nobbi | ||||
| Other names: | Nobbi Lashtail or Nobbi Lizard | ||||
Thank you Asimakis Patitsas, Stephen Mahony & Scott Eipper for confirming the id of this species for us EXTRA - Photo Specific Information: When you have a patient subject, like this chap, you have an opportunity to maximise the quality of the photo. We took a photo (the previous one labelled "With Shadows") and realised the amount of shadows and wanted to improve the quality. I asked Marie to stand in the sun light to create a complete shadow (ie uniform lighting), and then used the flash. We were ecstatic. The result here was outstanding. General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere Grey, sometimes with a pale brown star pattern around the eye. This varies with the angle of light. 2 silver grey stripes down the back, which can be solid or with diamond breaks or non-existant. Large rear legs (almost frog like) with very long toes. Jacky Lizards (Amphibolurus muricatus) are hard to tell from Nobbi Lizards, but we don't get Jacky's in our area. We've just discovered a species we do get in the area that is *very* similar, a Mallee Tree Dragon (Amphibolurus norrisi); these have yellow mouths but don't have coloured males. As such, we can be sure our males in breeding colours are D. nobbi; but not so sure if the others are D. nobbi or A. norrisi. The SA Museum's "Key to the Dragons of South Australia" talks about Nobbi's having 3 or 5 "keel" lines. You can see them clearly in the photo's of the gravid females shown here; they are 5 lines of scales with longitudinal vertical projections. We recognise the gravid females by the bulging abdomen just forward of the rear legs. Males in breeding colours have yellow around the eye, 2 yellow dorsal stripes, a pinkish tail and red under-abdomen. Asimakis said "D. nobbi can appear superficially similar to A. norrisi, but the head is much more elongated and depressed in the latter, and the scalation is quite different overall. Subtle, but different. these two dragons have very interesting distributions in Southern SA." He indicated they are very rare on the western side of the Murray Valley, between the river and the MLR. | |||||
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