show Abstracthide AbstractFemale heterogamety with a degenerated W chromosome typifies the lizards of the family Lacertidae, the widely distributed Old World clade including several hundreds of species. From the liver transcriptome of the lacertid Takydromus sexlineatus female, we selected candidates for Z-specific genes as the loci lacking single nucleotide polymorphisms. We validated the candidate genes through the comparison of the gene copy numbers in the female and male genomes of T. sexlineatus by qPCR.