10/19/2026
Behind the Catalog Number: Sternberg Herpetology Chronicles
2026-3: An Italian Lizard in Western Kansas
On 4 April 2004, Fort Hays State University undergraduate Erik M. Bartholomew caught two small lizards by hand near Albertson Hall on the FHSU campus. He brought them to the Sternberg specifically so that we could document a population of Italian Wall Lizards (*Podarcis siculus*) that had already become established in Hays. We euthanized and prepared both animals, retained tissue samples, and added them to the Sternberg Museum of Natural History collection as FHSM-H 8342 and FHSM-H 8343. They became the first preserved vouchers for this non-native species from Ellis County.
Those two specimens, however, were not the beginning of the story. In November 1998, I had glimpsed a lizard outside Picken Hall. It quickly slipped beneath the building's foundation. I was familiar with Italian Wall Lizards but had seen the animal only briefly and could not be certain what it was. I deliberately walked past that spot afterward, hoping to see it again, but did not. Meanwhile, people reported fast-moving lizards around campus and downtown. Based on their descriptions, I assumed they were native Six-lined Racerunners, even though I had never encountered a racerunner on campus.
By the summer of 2000, several of us had seen enough of these lizards to confidently identify them as Italian Wall Lizards, including adults and hatchling-sized individuals, strongly suggesting that the population was already reproducing. But getting a specimen was another matter. Italian Wall Lizards tend to stay close to a building foundation, crack, or other shelter, darting out of reach almost as soon as they are noticed. Erik eventually obtained the first two Hays vouchers by hand, on his own initiative. His record was published in the *Journal of Kansas Herpetology* that June. Erik subsequently became a biologist with Idaho Fish and Game.
The Italian Wall Lizard is native to parts of southern Europe, including the Italian Peninsula and Sicily, not western Kansas. Its Kansas history reaches back to Topeka and Quivira Specialties, a biological supply business founded in 1944 by Charles E. Burt. Lizards associated with that business escaped or were released, and a population became established in the surrounding neighborhood. Another European species, the Western Green Lacerta, was introduced there as well, but has spread far less successfully.
Much of what we know about the early history of Topeka's introduced lizards comes from people like Jim Gubanyi, who had an unusual personal connection to their arrival. Born in 1944, the year Quivira Specialties opened, Jim moved to Topeka at 15 and worked for Burt as a high school student, before the business closed following Burt's death in 1963. Jim was not a professional herpetologist, but his curiosity and persistence made him an important contributor to Kansas herpetology. I knew him from 1989 until his death in 2010. On Kansas Herpetological Society field trips, he was a constant presence, often with his young daughter in tow. At the end of a survey, participants would trickle back with their finds, but nobody left until Jim returned. His diligence often rewarded him with something no one else had turned up. I remember trips with roughly 120 people gathered at the meeting place, waiting for Jim to return, and then watching him produce the largest Western Milksnake, Speckled Kingsnake, or Great Plains Ratsnake any of us had ever seen. To the Kansas herpetologists who worked alongside him, he was very much one of their own.
Unlike the Mediterranean Gecko, which has established populations in several Kansas towns and can be inadvertently carried in goods and materials, Italian Wall Lizards in Kansas generally occur in isolated urban populations via human-assisted movement. Some introductions may be accidental escapes, others deliberate releases. The isolated populations in Hays and other Kansas cities are consistent with human-assisted introductions rather than natural expansion across the intervening countryside. Other urban populations have subsequently been documented or reported in Lawrence, the Kansas City area, Wichita, and Joplin, Missouri, among other places.
By 2004, Italian Wall Lizards were being seen near Albertson, Malloy, Picken, Sheridan, and Stroup Halls, amid older campus buildings bordered by mulched beds of shrubs and flowering plants. The setting is much the same today. Shortly after Erik collected the two vouchers, lizards were documented in another pocket roughly three-quarters of a mile east-southeast along the railroad tracks in central Hays. I had heard reports from that area but had assumed they, too, were Six-lined Racerunners. Even knowing about the Italian Wall Lizards on campus, I had not expected them at that second location. The two groups initially appeared separated in the occurrence records. Erik’s specimens had prompted broader interest among people studying and observing reptiles in Hays. We began paying closer attention to where these lizards appeared, so that changes in their distribution could be followed, at least approximately, in the years ahead.
The museum record continued to grow. Zachary J. Schwenke collected FHSM-H 13683 near Albertson Hall on 16 September 2007. Isaac Fox and Gavin Wasinger collected four additional Italian Wall Lizards on the FHSU campus in September and October 2024 (FHSM-H 18342, 18348, 18349, and 18363). Three more were added in 2025: one collected by Isaac Fox in late August (FHSM-H 18635) and two by Jackson Roberts in early September (FHSM-H 18633–18634). Although these later collections were not associated with a specific research project, they provide physical documentation of the population's persistence. Together with Erik's original two specimens, the Sternberg now holds ten vouchers from Hays spanning more than two decades, complementing the growing number of observations documenting the species' expansion.
The distribution maps also draw on citizen-science observations that I have personally verified, as well as specimen records. They provide a way to follow the population’s expanding known distribution, even though not every lizard or occupied site was recorded. The population did not stand still. By 2010, the known extent of both Hays clusters had increased by several hundred yards, although they remained separate on the map. By 2020, their recorded distributions could no longer be distinguished, and the lizards had spread northeast into town by more than a mile. Today, they are found across much of Hays west of Vine Street (U.S. 183). On a sunny morning in western Hays, seeing one or more is almost expected.
Their expansion has been markedly uneven. From the university area on the southwestern edge of town, records now extend nearly two miles north and about 1.3 miles east through developed areas, but only about a tenth of a mile south or west into less urbanized surroundings. The urban landscape supplies what these lizards need: walls, foundations, ornamental plantings, and abundant hiding places.
That habitat has already been profoundly altered by people. Irrigated fescue lawns, exotic trees and shrubs, pavement, and buildings have replaced much of the original vegetation. Historical records establish that Great Plains Skinks, Texas Horned Lizards, and Six-lined Racerunners once occurred on the FHSU campus, but records have been sparse since the 1940s, long before Italian Wall Lizards appeared. Great Plains Skinks are still reported occasionally, especially toward the town's margins. There is no evidence here that Italian Wall Lizards drove those native species out: the transformation of their habitat preceded the newcomers. Introduced and established do not automatically mean invasive.
You can help document the continued spread of Italian Wall Lizards and other species by submitting photographs and observations to iNaturalist, a free online platform where anyone can contribute to our understanding of biodiversity. Observations are associated with a location and date, and other users can help identify the organisms photographed. These records become valuable scientific data that researchers can use to study species distributions, seasonal activity, and changes over time. Many of the observations shown on these maps came from citizen scientists whose reports I subsequently verified. Observations from new localities are especially useful, even when the species seems common or unremarkable. https://www.inaturalist.org/
The genetic history adds one more intriguing connection. A study of Italian Wall Lizards in the United States traced sampled Topeka animals to ancestral populations near Florence, in Tuscany. Although the Topeka colony is the likely source of the Hays population, that connection has not been genetically confirmed. Tissue samples preserved from FHSM-H 8342 and 8343, as well as subsequent Hays collections, remain available for genetic analysis to help determine whether the Hays population originated in Topeka or elsewhere.
The lizard that disappeared beneath Picken Hall in 1998 left only a memory. Erik's two specimens provided something more enduring: permanent, independently verifiable evidence of a population already established in Hays. More than two decades later, those specimens, the additional vouchers collected since, and hundreds of observations across Kansas continue to document the changing distribution of a species that arrived in Kansas through human intervention.
- Travis W. Taggart, Research Associate, Sternberg Museum of Natural History
1. The two Italian Wall Lizards (FHSM-H 8342–8343) collected by Erik M. Bartholomew near Albertson Hall at Fort Hays State University on 4 April 2004. These specimens are the first preserved vouchers documenting the species in Ellis County, Kansas. Photograph: Meg Taggart.
2. A live adult Italian Wall Lizard photographed in Shawnee County, Kansas. Photograph: Katie Van Blaricum.
3. Albertson Hall, Fort Hays State University. Erik Bartholomew collected FHSM-H 8342 and 8343 near this building in April 2004, formally documenting a population that had been observed on campus for several years. Photograph: FHSU.
4. Erik M. Bartholomew. As an FHSU undergraduate, Erik captured the two Italian Wall Lizards that became the first preserved vouchers from Hays. He subsequently became a biologist with Idaho Fish and Game. Photograph: Bartholomew family.
5. Jim Gubanyi (1944–2010). A longtime Kansas Herpetological Society field-trip participant and contributor to Kansas herpetology, Jim worked as a teenager at Charles E. Burt’s Quivira Specialties in Topeka. His observations and publications helped document the city's introduced lizards. Photograph: Gubanyi family.
6. Topeka, Kansas: Italian Wall Lizard occurrences. Documented localities are concentrated in the urban landscape surrounding the original introduction area. The red star marks the former site of Quivira Specialties, the biological supply business associated with the Topeka population's origin. Map: Travis W. Taggart [TWT].
7. Hays, Kansas: Italian Wall Lizard occurrences. Museum records and personally verified citizen-science observations trace the species' spread from the Fort Hays State University area into much of western Hays. The red star marks the collection locality of FHSM-H 8342–8343, the first preserved Hays vouchers. Map: TWT.
8. Lawrence, Kansas: Italian Wall Lizard occurrences. Records show another urban population in Douglas County, Kansas, illustrating the species' establishment in separate communities across the state. Map: TWT.
9. Picken Hall, Fort Hays State University. The site of my first tentative observation of an Italian Wall Lizard on campus in November 1998. Photograph: Brack & Associates.
10. Herpetologist Charles E. Burt (1904–1963), founder and proprietor of Quivira Specialties in Topeka, while serving as a faculty member at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas. Photograph: 1942 Southwestern College yearbook.
11. Three established non-native lizards in Kansas. Adult specimens of the Italian Wall Lizard (Podarcis siculus), FHSM-H 18633, collected in Ellis County by Jackson Roberts; Mediterranean Gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus), FHSM-H 12335, collected in Johnson County by Travis W. Taggart; and Western Green Lacerta (Lacerta bilineata), FHSM-H 7923, collected in Shawnee County by Jim Gubanyi. Photograph: Meg Taggart.
