Eremias arguta ( Pallas, 1773 )

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 : 33

Eremias arguta ( Pallas, 1773)

NEOTYPE. ZIL 13205, designated by Szczerbak (1974).

TYPE LOCALITY. “Irtin australiorem, rarius circa M. Caspium” [= southern Irtin, ... Caspian Sea, W Kazakhstan] as given by Pallas (1773); Ural and Emba rivers according to Szczerbak (1974).

DISTRIBUTION. Wide range spanning from the Eastern Europe through Central Asia to NW China and Mongolia. Southern limit formed by Transcaucasia and N Iran.

DISTRIBUTION IN IRAN. Fig. 91 . Confirmed records are from West and East Azerbaijan and Ardabil Prov. Records from Shahrud, Semnan Prov. by Bedriaga (1879) and from “Kuhistan” by Werner (1936) as well as specimens deposited in the ZMB museum allegedly from Tehran are doubtful and require confirmation.

HABITAT. Ahmadzadeh et al. (2008) collected specimens in a harvested barley field. Other reports are from unforested ridges with scanty herbaceous vegetation ( Sobolevsky 1929).

REMARKS. The subspecific status of the Iranian populations is not clear. Geographically closest and the potential candidates are E. a. deserti Gmelin known from the E Transcaucasia and E. a. transcaucasica Darevsky from Armenia. The only record since Anderson (1999) was provided by Ahmadzadeh et al. (2008) who, however, did not determine the animal to any subspecies.

REFERENCES. Anderson (1999).

Figures

FIGURES 86–91. 86. Darevskia raddei. Red symbols represent records of D. r. raddei, blue of D. r. chaldoranensis and blue square denotes its type locality. 87. Darevskia schaekeli. 88. Darevskia steineri. 89. Eremias acutirostris. 90. Eremias andersoni. 91. Eremias arguta.