Southern Alligator Lizard -
Elgaria multicarinata

Identifying Alligator Lizards in California

In his 2003 field guide, Stebbins mentions that the species Elgaria multicarinata occurs from sea level to over 5,000 ft. in elevation (1,524 m.) but since then it has been found at 7,250 ft. (2,210 m.) on Frazier Mountain in Ventura County and at 8,000 ft. (2,438 m.) in the eastern San Bernardino Mountains. (A picture of it is shown above © Dave Goodward.) Another higher-elevation sighting was made in June 2019 at 8374 ft. (2552 m.) at Whitney Portal, Inyo County, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In June, 2019 Joseph Esparza took pictures of one basking on rocks with 2-3 feet of snow on the ground nearby at 10,362 ft. (3158 m.) on top of Marion Mountain in the San Jacinto State Park Wilderness. At that location in June, 2019, Joseph Esparza observed a Southern Alligator Lizard basking in the sun on a large granite boulder that was partially surrounded by about 3 feet (1 m.) of snow on the ground. Snow was fully covering the entire north slope of the mountain at the time.
(Joseph E. Esparza & Gregory B. Pauly. Natural History Notes. Herpetological Review 51(1), 2020)

Except for Hansen and Shedd (2025), most of the field guides and online reptile taxonomy sources I can find that have been published or put online before January, 2025 show three subspecies of Elgaria multicarinata occuring in California, including Wickipedia, the Reptile Database, and the most recent 2018 Stebbins field guide. The 2017 Scientific and Common Names List published by the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, which I have followed until now, shows a two subspecies arrangement. In the seven years since it was published, this website is one of the only places that followed that arrangement, adding their new common names and new ranges. As of January 2025 I am abandoning that view, but instead of returning to the three subspecies arrangement, I will follow recent studies that do not recognize any subspecies and wait for further research that might one day separate them again. Unlike with the Northern Alligator Lizards, morphological differences between the Southern Alligator Lizard subspecies has never been very obvious in pictures or in the field, so separating them into subspecies does not help to illustrate their diversity except for illustrating it on range maps.

Hansen and Shedd (2025) provide this taxonomic note that describes their decision not to recognize subspecies: "The most recent phylogenetic studies revealed discordance with historically recognized subspecies boundaries, coupled with E. multicarinata recovered as a paraphyletic taxon (Felman and Spicer 2006; Leavitt et al. 2017). In addition to these studies, extensive phenotypic variation across the range of this species often prevents confident assignment to subspecies in the field."

Joseph Grinnell and Charles Lewis Camp. A Distributional List of the Amphibians and Reptiles of California. University of California Publications in Zoology Vol. 17, No. 10, pp. 127-208. July 11, 1917.