Lizards of the genus Cnemidophorus from the Leeward Group and the adjacent mainland of South America

When WAGENAAR HUMMELINCK (1940, p. 83—85) made a survey of the lizards of Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire and the Venezuelan Islands, he could give no more than a short list of specimens collected, together with a few critical remarks, and a single table on “Variation in Cnemidophorus” based on 379 specimens. In later years more material has been collected by the same investigator in the same region, which has been entrusted to the author for further study. This enabled her to give special attention to a few data which have been disturbing the zoogeographical concept of the lemniscatus-group for a long time already. It has been known for quite a while that the species Cnemidophorus lemniscatus has a remarkably uniform distribution along the northern coast of South America as far as Suriname, while on the chain of islands nearby, which is called Leeward Group — in contrast to the Windward Group which comprises the Lesser Antilles from the Virgin Islands to Grenada — a number of species and subspecies occur which may be more or less related to the mainland species. Up till now the classification of these island populations appears to be a question of individual taste only, in which an arbitrary judgement is necessarily involved.