Peloponnese 26th of April – 7th of May 2006

Part 4: Taygetos - Mani´s Roof

On our 7th day we crossed the Taygetos via Saidona and Exochori, two small mountain villages in the Taygetos. When we reached the end of the sealed road we checked out a torrent and searched in the valley. Rana graeca is the local brown frog that is very common along the mountain streams. We found lots of tadpoles in the pools, while larvae of Salamandra salamandra were rare. In the shady surroundings of an old left monastery we found our first Anguis cephallonicus (the Alphios stop was later) and not far away Christoph mentioned that he found something like situla through our walkie-talkies. We were all really happy to find our first living Zamenis situla – and it was not the only one. Only a few minutes later Hannes and Franz found juvenile leopard snakes.  It could be they all came from the same clutch.  Literature has already mentioned that although Z. situla rarely exceeds elevations over 500 m, we found three within 10 minutes in about 1000 m elevation!  We found all other common species up to 1000 m of course.

Near the streams we found a big dark scorpion – Iurus dufoureius, which inhabits moisture habitats. According to Keymar the scorpion is very poisonous and dangerous. In dryer habitats it is replaced by Mesobuthus (probably) gibbosus which is also quite common.

In higher elevation the vegetation changed and natural forests replaced the olive plantations. The climate became cooler and we observed a different herpetofauna adapted to the moist climate. Rana graeca populates small stagnant ponds as well as streams. Lizard specialist Werner stopped nearby some rocks, because he had a suspect of finding Lacerta graeca and really after a few seconds we angled several Greek lizards. We assessed a preference of steep rocky terrain for the lizards, which showed a lot of compliances with L. oxycephala: Both species colonise rocks and show the typical plain snout to enter even smallest chinks in the rock – maybe L. oxycephala is shyer than L. graeca. According to Dr. Mayer these two species are not related in terms of genetic, they just had very similar adaptation processes during their evolution and developed similar characteristics.

Taygetos: nice habitat

When we passed the ridge we stopped for Podarcis muralis and again we were lucky. The area of the wall lizards starts at about an elevation of 800 m and reaches the top of the Taygetos. We found lots of juvenile lizards while adults were rare. From the optical point of view we couldn’t find big differences to the Austrian lizards, although the local subspecies albanica differs to the nominatic form. The further we drove the steeper and worse became the road and while crossing several torrents we had to push the cars to proceed further. Finally we came to a passage, which we couldn’t cross and so we had to drive back to the top of the pass. When we drove through a shady, damp forest we found an adult fire salamander, which was freshly killed by traffic. Fire salamanders are quite rare in the area and unfortunately it was the only adult specimen which we found during our stay. We could not find big differences to Austrian salamanders - maybe the dots are a bit smaller.

Finally we found a road which led us to the east side of the Taygetos, where we made a last stop before our obligatory beer break. We found all common species again and the highlight was a semiadult Scheltopusik. After about hundred recorded P. apodus it was the first observation of a specimen with the typical juvenile pattern – we don’t know why they are so hard to find…

After our stop in Gythio we investigated the slope to the castle of Pasavas where we found 10 species (while we lost one species): Algyroides moreoticus (in copula), Lacerta trilineata, Podarcis peloponnesiaca, Lacerta graeca, Ophiopmorus punctatissimus (common), Ablepharus kitaibelii, Mediodactylus kotschyi, Testudo marginata, Hierophis gemonensis, Platyceps najadum, Bufo bufo and Pelophylax ridibunda. It was quite a typical site for the Peloponnese but we lost one of our members. Franz did not find the way back to our starting point, he got lost completely and fortunately Franz had one of our walky talkies and after about two hours of search we located him several miles away… Guess who paid the beer in the evening!

Part5: Pylos - The Western Peninsula

Part3: Mani peninsula - costal area