''Hydrosaurus'', commonly known as the sailfin dragons or sailfin lizards, is a genus in the family

Agamidae Agamidae is a family containing 582 species in 64 genera of iguanian lizards indigenous to Africa, Asia, Australia, and a few locations in Southern Europe. Many species are commonly called dragons or dragon lizards. Overview Phylogenetically ...

.''Hydrosaurus''
The Reptile Database These relatively large lizards are named after the sail-like structure on their tails. They are native to

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

(four species) and the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

(one species), where they are generally found near water, such as rivers and

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows mainly in coastal saline water, saline or brackish water. Mangroves grow in an equatorial climate, typically along coastlines and tidal rivers. They have particular adaptations to take in extra oxygen a ...

swamps.Cameron D. Siler, Andrés Lira-Noriega, Rafe M. Brown (2014). Conservation genetics of Australasian sailfin lizards: Flagship species threatened by coastal development and insufficient protected area coverage. Biological Conservation 169: 100–108. Sailfin lizards are

semiaquatic In biology, being semi-aquatic refers to various macroorganisms that live regularly in both aquatic and terrestrial environments. When referring to animals, the term describes those that actively spend part of their daily time in water (in ...

and able to run short distances across water using both their feet and tail for support, similar to the basilisks.Jackman Bauer (2008). Global diversity of lizards in freshwater (Reptilia: Lacertilia). Hydrobiologia 595(1): 581–586. They are threatened by both

habitat loss Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss or habitat reduction) occurs when a natural habitat is no longer able to support its native species. The organisms once living there have either moved elsewhere, or are dead, leading to a decrease ...

and overcollection for the wild-animal trade. In the 19th century, the genus was called ''Lophura'', but in 1903, Poche pointed out that the name was preoccupied by a genus of pheasants. Since Günther in 1873, the Sulawesi populations were considered to belong to ''H. amboinensis''; Denzer et al. in 2020 resurrected ''H. celebensis'' and ''H. microlophus'', increasing the number of species from three to five. They are the only members of the subfamily Hydrosaurinae.

Species

Currently, five species are valid according to the

Reptile Database The Reptile Database is a scientific database that collects taxonomic information on all living reptile species (i.e. no fossil species such as dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared ...

References

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''Hydrosaurus''
ZipCodeZoo.com Lizard genera Taxa named by Johann Jakob Kaup {{agamidae-stub