Santo Domingo Curlytail Lizard

The first description of Leiocephalus lunatus was published by Doris Mable Cochran in 1934, under the name Leiocephalus personatus lunatus. The name lunatus is derived from Latin, meaning 'crescent' or 'half-moon', which according to herpetologists Robert Powell and Matthew Gifford is a reference to the lizard's "crescent-shaped shoulder patches". The holotype of the species is a male specimen collected by George Kruck Cherrie in 1895, with the type locality being Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. In 1967, Albert Schwartz recognized lunatus as its own species rather than as a subspecies of Leiocephalus personatus.

Subspecies. L. lunatus has six recognized subspecies, with L. l. lunatus being the subspecies of Cochran's original description of L. personatus lunatus, recognized by Schwartz as a subspecies of L. lunatus when he recognized the latter as its own species in 1967. The other subspecies are louisae, arenicolor, melaenascelis, thomasi and lewisi. Of these, louisae and arenicolor were also originally considered subspecies of personatus before being moved to lunatus by Schwartz in 1967. The first description of L. l. louisae was published by Cochran in 1934, alongside the one of L. l. lunatus. …