Mexican Racerunner

Mexican Racerunner, Aspidoscelis guttatus

Mexican Racerunner, Aspidoscelis guttatus. Photographs taken in Parque National Huatulco, Huatulco, Oaxaca, March 2021. Photographs and identifications courtesy of Marina Sutormina, Stockholm, Sweden.

The Mexican Racerunner, Aspidoscelis guttatus, is a member of the Teiidae family of Whiptails and Racerunners.  The Teiidae family consists of two hundred forty-five species placed in forty genera. There are forty-four species and sixty-five subspecies in the Aspidoscelis genus. They are known in Mexico as Huico Mexicano and Ticuiliche Mexicano.

Mexican Racerunners are medium-sized with long tails. Their dorsal side is orangish brown in color with smooth, granular scales. Their neck and body are marked with highly variable white, brown, and black patterns of spots and stripes. Their ventral side is lighter in color with large overlapping scales. They have long, thin toes with well developed claws that enable them to dig for prey and climb various surfaces. Their tail is covered with large, overlapping, keeled scales that are darker in color than their body. Their head is triangular-shaped with an elongated, pointed nose. Dark brown ear spots lie just caudal to their eyes. They are diurnal and primarily ground-dwelling, despite being anatomically equipped to climb. The Mexican Racerunner is poorly studied with very limited information available about their lifestyle and behavioral patterns including specific details on age, growth, longevity, movement patterns, diet, habitat use, and reproduction.

Mexican Racerunners are endemic to Mexico. They occur in eastern Mexico from Northern Veracruz to the upper Cintalapa Valley in Chapas. In western Mexico they are found from the Rio Balsas southward to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. They are found from sea level to elevations up to 1,200 m (3,935 feet). Mexican Racerunners primarily inhabit tropical deciduous forest and tropical evergreen forest. They can also be found in savannas, coastal dunes, degraded and secondary habitats, cattle ranches, and croplands.


The Mexican Racerunner may be confused with the Six-lined Racerunner, Aspidoscelis sexlineatus (six narrow and well defined white or yellow stripes extending from the back of their head to about one-third of their tail; found southeastern and south-central portion of the United States to southern Texas and northeast Tamaulipas, Mexico.

From a conservation perspective, the Mexican Racerunner is currently considered to be of Least Concern due to their wide distribution, presumed large population size, and tolerance of human disturbance. No major threats have been identified for this species.