Alonissos, 25.5. – 2.6.2024

As we never had visited the Northern Sporades before, we had the full choice which island we wanted to explore. We finally decided to go to Alonissos, the remotest of the inhabited islands. Our journey started in Thessaloniki via Volos, where we took the ferry to the island. It was quite a long but beautiful ride via Skiathos and Skopelos (5 hours overall).

Alonissos is a rather calm island with extensive pine forests and scrublands. It seems to lack of natural freshwaters (ponds or streams). During our stay (end of May), the vegetation was already very dry.

The herpetofauna of Alonissos has recently been reviewed (https://herpetozoa.pensoft.net/article/125965/). Despite of the long distance to the mainland, it comprises 11 species:

1.       Pelophylax ridibundus (presumably extinct)

2.       Testudo marginata

3.       Ablepharus kitaibelii

4.       Hemidactylus turcicus

5.       Mediodactylus kotschyi

6.       Lacerta trilineata

7.       Podarcis erhardii

8.       Dolichophis caspius

9.       Telescopus fallax

10.   Zamenis situla

11.   Vipera ammodytes

Like on other islands, the omnipresence of Podarcis erhardii on Alonissos is striking – In contrast to this, all other lizards seem to be quite rare: During our four days stay, we only had 3 sightings of Lacerta trilineata in total. And even the gecko sightings were limited to very few encounters under stones. The most abundant snake is Dolichophis caspius which frequently can be seen crossing the road. Vipera ammodytes seems to be quite local but not very rare. In contrast to this, there have been very few records of Zamenis situla. Telescopus fallax was not encountered.

Podarcis erhardii is present on the Sporades by subspecies ruthveni, which at the first glance resembles to subsp. riveti on adjoining mainland. However, it differs from the mainland subspecies in morphological characteristics (number of dorsal scales). It is a brownish form, often with small white dots on the flanks. On Alonissos, it usually shows white, sometimes orange and rarely yellow throats.

Back on the mainland, we decided to explore the Pilion, a coastal mountain range near Volos. These mountains turned out remarkably green, covered with extensive beech forests. The most abundant lizards of this area were Lacerta viridis and Podarcis muralis. Strangely, Podarcis muralis is not limited to high altitudes here but was found from 300 meters osl. (According to iNaturalist, it even occurs in the city gardens of Volos at sea level). On the other hand, Podarcis erhardii seems to lack in most parts of Pilion – at least we didn’t find this species here. Other species seen were Mediodactylus kotschyi, Hierophis gemonensis, Elaphe quatuorlineata, and Coronella austriaca.

On our way back north, we had a stop-over on Mount Ossa. Due to high temperatures, we only had few lizard findings comprising Podarcis erhardii, Podarcis muralis, Lacerta bilineata as well as Malpolon insignitus crossing the road.

Broggi, M.F. (2010) - The herpetofauna of Alonissos (Northern Sporades, Greece) - Herpetozoa 23 (1/2): 71 - 78 71 Wien

Foufopoulos J, Roussos S, Kalogiannis S, Kalb S, Strachinis I, Brock KM (2024) The herpetofauna of the Sporades Islands (Aegean Sea, Greece): New discoveries and a review of a century of research. Herpetozoa 37: 241-258. https://doi.org/10.3897/herpetozoa.37.e125965

Grillitsch, H., & Tiedemann, F. (1982). Zur Herpetofauna der griechischen Inseln Kea, Spanopoula, Kithnos, Sifnos, Kitriani (Cycladen), Alonissos und Piperi (Nördliche Sporaden). Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien. Serie B für Botanik und Zoologie, 7-28.

Gruber, U., & Schultze-Westrum, T. (1971). Zur Taxonomie und Ökologie der Cycladen-Eidechse (Lacerta erhardii) von der Nördlichen Sporaden. Bonn. Zool. Beitr, 22, 101-130.