A wild, male Red-headed Rock Agama, Agama agama, aka Common Agama, sunning himself on a rock in the ground of Lake Nakuru Lodge in Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya, East Africa. (This is one of several lizard species which are sometimes known as ‘Rainbow Agama’.)
This species is distributed in a broad band across the centre of Africa, but via the pet trade has been released or escaped in Florida, where it has become invasive since its first feral discovery in the mid-1970s.
More than 50 years ago, scientists discovered that Agama agamas are TSD (temperature sex determined), i.e. eggs incubated in relatively lower temperatures hatch as females whereas eggs in higher tempartures (30°C) hatch as males. A more recent study (2018) showed that eggs incubated at higher temperatures still hatched out as females.
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