Mediodactylus Szczerbak & Golubev, 1977

Šmíd, Jiří, Moravec, Jiří, Kodym, Petr, Kratochvíl, Lukáš, Yousefkhani, Seyyed Saeed Hosseinian, Rastegar-Pouyani, Eskandar & Frynta, Daniel, 2014, Annotated checklist and distribution of the lizards of Iran, Zootaxa 3855 (1), pp. 1-97 : 20-21

Mediodactylus Szczerbak & Golubev, 1977

Mediodactylus aspratilis ( Anderson, 1973)

HOLOTYPE. USNM 193961 .

TYPE LOCALITY. 35 km E Gach Saran, Fars Prov., Iran.

DISTRIBUTION. Endemic to Iran.

DISTRIBUTION IN IRAN. Fig. 48 . SW Iran W of the Zagros. This gecko was for long thought to be distributed only in Fars and Kohgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmad Prov. ( Anderson 1999; Sindaco & Jeremčenko 2008), but recent extensive field work in western Iran resulted in numerous new records from Kermanshah, Hamadan, and Lorestan Prov. ( Kami 1999; Nazari-Serenjeh & Torki 2008a; Torki 2010b; Karamiani & Rastegar-Pouyani 2011).

HABITAT. Rocky Zagros foothill regions with sparse vegetation where the geckos seek for shelter in rock crevices and between boulders; also found on a wall of a residential building ( Kami 1999; Karamiani & Rastegar-Pouyani 2011).

REMARKS. Originally described as Bunopus , but later on reassigned to the genus Carinatogecko ( Golubev & Szczerbak 1981) , which has been, in turn, synonymized with Mediodactylus by Červenka et al. (2010). However, many authors do not accept this later synonymization and consider Carinatogecko a valid genus (see comments by Torki (2011)), but without any support from phylogenetic analyses. Based on a distribution of key characters among examined specimens, Červenka et al. (2010) also tentatively concluded that M. aspratilis might be a junior synonym of M. heteropholis .

REFERENCES. Anderson (1973, 1999); Golubev & Szczerbak (1981); Kami (1999); Nazari-Serenjeh & Torki (2008a); Červenka et al. (2010); Karamiani & Rastegar-Pouyani (2011).

Figures

FIGURES 44–49. 44. Hemidactylus flaviviridis. 45. Hemidactylus persicus. 46. Hemidactylus robustus. Question marks indicate dubious data or specimens determined as H. turcicus. 47. Hemidactylus romeshkanicus. 48. Mediodactylus aspratilis. 49. Mediodactylus heterocercum.