Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

Pog­ona vit­ti­ceps has a wide nat­ural dis­tri­b­u­tion in east­ern and cen­tral Aus­tralia. They are found from the east­ern half of south Aus­tralia to the south­east­ern North­ern Ter­ri­tory (Grenard 1999).

• Biogeographic Regions
• australian
  • native

Habi­tat

Pog­ona vit­ti­ceps oc­cu­pies a large range of habi­tats from the desert to dry forests and scrub­lands. It is a semi­ar­bo­real lizard that can be found bask­ing on fallen branches, fence posts and pic­nic ta­bles (Grenard 1999).

• Terrestrial Biomes
• desert or dune
• savanna or grassland

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

In­land Bearded Drag­ons are 13 to 24 inches long, in­clud­ing the tail. They are ap­pro­pri­ately named bearded drag­ons be­cause of their "beard," an ex­pand­able throat pouch with spikey scales. They have a broad, tri­an­gu­lar head, round bod­ies, stout legs, and ro­bust tails. Color for this species de­pends on the soil of the re­gion they live in, rang­ing from dull brown to tan with red or gold high­lights (Tosney 1996).

Re­pro­duc­tion

In­land Bearded drag­ons reach sex­ual ma­tu­rity at 1 to 2 years of age. Mat­ing oc­curs in the Aus­tralian spring and sum­mer months of Sep­tem­ber to March. How­ever, cap­tive in­door drag­ons do not seem to be sea­sonal and can breed year round (Grenard 1999). Fe­males dig a bur­row and lay up to 24 eggs per clutch, and up to 9 clutches per year. Fe­males have also been known to store sperm and are able to lay many clutches of fer­tile eggs from one mat­ing (Tosney 1996). In cap­tive con­di­tions, the eggs will hatch in 55 to 75 days, at 28.9 de­grees Cel­sius (Vosjoli 1993).

Be­hav­ior

The beard of Pog­ona vit­ti­ceps is used for both mat­ing and agres­sion dis­plays. Both sexes have a beard, but males dis­play more fre­quently, es­pe­cially for courtship rit­u­als. Fe­males will, how­ever, dis­play their beard as a sign of ag­gres­sion also. The beard turns dark to jet black and in­flates dur­ing the dis­play. The bearded dragon may also open its mouth and gape in ad­di­tion to in­flat­ing its beard to ap­pear more in­tim­i­dat­ing.

An­other in­ter­est­ing be­hav­ior is arm wav­ing. The bearded dragon stands on 3 legs and waves one of its fore­limbs in a slow cir­cu­lar pat­tern. It looks a lot like the bearded dragon is wav­ing hello, or swim­ming using only one arm. One func­tion of arm wav­ing seems to be species recog­ni­tion. Arm wav­ing is also used to show sub­mis­sion. A small bearded dragon will re­spond with arm wav­ing when con­fronted with a larger, more dom­i­nant bearded dragon. Fe­males will also arm wave to avoid ag­gres­sion from males, es­pe­cially if the male is head bob­bing.

Head bob­bing is when the male quickly bobs its head up and down, often with a dark­ened beard. The male will head bob to show dom­i­nance to both smaller in­sub­or­di­nate males and fe­males that he would like to mate with (Zof­fer 1997).

Food Habits

Pog­ona vit­ti­ceps are op­por­tunis­tic om­ni­vores. They live in areas where food may be hard to find, so bearded drag­ons are not finicky eaters. Their stom­achs are large to ac­com­mo­date large quan­ti­ties of plant mat­ter, in­sects, and the oc­ca­sional small ro­dent or lizard (Grenard 1999).

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

In­land bearded drag­ons have been used in sci­en­tific re­search (Wood 1995). They are also very pop­u­lar in the pet trade. In re­cent years, the bearded dragon has be­come a fa­vorite rep­tile to keep and breed be­cause of their man­age­able size and pleas­ant tem­pera­ment. With their array of so­cial be­hav­iors and in­quis­i­tive na­ture, bearded drag­ons quickly be­come en­dear­ing to their keep­ers (Tosney 1996).

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

• IUCN Red List [Link]

  Not Evaluated

• CITES

  No special status

Other Com­ments

Since the 1960's, Aus­tralia has strictly pro­hib­ited ex­ports of any na­tive wildlife. It is be­lieved that the "founder stock" of cap­tive bred bearded drag­ons found out­side of Aus­tralia today were smug­gled out of the coun­try be­tween 1974 and 1990 (Grenard 1999).

Pog­ona vit­ti­ceps is the most com­monly found cap­tive bred bearded dragon species. Breed­ers are fo­cus­ing on breed­ing for par­tic­u­lar col­ors such as red phase or gold phase, which are more mar­ketable (Grenard 1999).

Con­trib­u­tors

Jen­nifer Pe­riat (au­thor), Michi­gan State Uni­ver­sity, James Hard­ing (ed­i­tor), Michi­gan State Uni­ver­sity.

Ref­er­ences

Grenard, S. 1999. An Owner's Guide to a Happy Healthy Pet: The Bearded Dragon. New York, NY: How­ell Book House.

Tosney, K. 1996. "Car­ing for an Aus­tralian Bearded Dragon" (On-line). Ac­cessed No­vem­ber 16, 1999 at http://​www.​ualberta.​ca/​~rswan/ERAAS/bd.​htm.

Vosjoli, P., R. Mail­loux. 1993. The Gen­eral Care and Main­te­nance of Bearded Drag­ons. Lake­side, CA: Ad­vanced Vi­var­ium Sys­tems, Inc..

Wood, P., C. Daniels, S. Orgeig. 1995. Func­tional sig­nif­i­cance and con­trol of re­lease of pul­monary sur­fac­tant in the lizard lung. Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Phys­i­ol­ogy, 269 (4 part 2): R838-R847.

Zof­fer, D., T. Ma­zorlig. 1997. The Guide to Own­ing a Bearded Dragon. Nep­tune City, NJ: T.F.H. Pub­li­ca­tions, Inc..