Laudakia nupta (de Filippi, 1843)

HOLOTYPE. MSNM, collection number unknown; Lectotype BMNH 74.11.23.11 (L. n. fusca) .

TYPE LOCALITY: Persepolis, Fars Prov., Iran.

DISTRIBUTION. E Iraq, S and C Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The river Indus seems to form a natural boundary in the east.

DISTRIBUTION IN IRAN. Fig. 11. Along the Zagros eastwards continuously up to the Pakistani border. Very common particularly in the western Zagros foothills. Isolated records from Semnan and Khorasan Razavi Prov .

HABITAT. Rocks of limestone and other outcrops, very often also found near human settlements, abandoned buildings, on walls, monuments and other man-made habitats; observed also in oak forests climbing trees.

REMARKS. Eastern populations in SE Iran and Pakistan belong to the subspecies L. n. fusca. Despite some authors consider this taxon a full species (Khan 2006; Cheatsazan et al. 2008b; Rastegar-Pouyani et al. 2008), the latest taxonomic revision by Baig et al. (2012) relegated it back to the status of a subspecies of L. nupta .

REFERENCES. Rastegar-Pouyani (1996); Anderson (1999, 2000); Rastegar-Pouyani & Nilson (2002); Mahjoorazad et al. (2005); Rastegar-Pouyani et al. (2006); Cheatsazan et al. (2008b); Mohammadi & Naderi (2012).