Mesalina microlepis (Angel, 1936) Jiří Šmíd & Jiří Moravec & Václav Gvoždík & Jan Štundl & Daniel Frynta & Petros Lymberakis & Paschalia Kapli & Thomas Wilms & Andreas Schmitz & Mohammed Shobrak & Saeed Hosseinian Yousefkhani & Eskandar Rastegar-Pouyani & Aurora M. Castilla & Johannes Els & Werner Mayer, 2017

Jiří Šmíd, Jiří Moravec, Václav Gvoždík, Jan Štundl, Daniel Frynta, Petros Lymberakis, Paschalia Kapli, Thomas Wilms, Andreas Schmitz, Mohammed Shobrak, Saeed Hosseinian Yousefkhani, Eskandar Rastegar-Pouyani, Aurora M. Castilla, Johannes Els & Werner Mayer, 2017, Cutting the Gordian Knot: Phylogenetic and ecological diversification of the Mesalina brevirostris species complex (Squamata, Lacertidae), Zoologica Scripta 46 (6), pp. 1-30 : 18

Mesalina microlepis (Angel, 1936) stat. nov.

Eremias brevirostris – Boulenger (1921)

Eremias brevirostris microlepis – Angel (1936)

Mesalina brevirostris microlepis – Szczerbak (1989)

Holotype. MNHN 1935.285 . Type locality: ‘Haouarine’ [‘à 55 kilomètres au S.­ E. de Homs’], ( Syria). MorphoBank pictures: M407268–M407305.

Distribution. Lebanon, Syria, northern Jordan and southern Turkey ( Fig. 1 ).

Notes. Mesalina microlepis is morphologically very similar to M. bernoullii and, contrary to what Angel (1936) suggested it cannot be distinguished from it by the numbers of dorsal and gular scales, and subdigital lamellae. The only morphological character that discriminates the species is the structure of the lower eyelid window. All specimens of M. microlepis (including the holotype) possess a window consisting of more than three roughly equal semitransparent scales whereas the window of M. bernoullii , M. brevirostris s. s. and the new Saudi species consists of 1–3 larger semitransparent scales (see Fig. 3 in Mayer et al. 2006). Mesalina microlepis and M. bernoullii have been confirmed to occur syntopically in western Syria (Mayer et al. 2006). The presence of M. microlepis in Jordan and Turkey is confirmed based on specimens with similar eyelid window structure (Haas & Werner 1969; Kumlutaş et al. 2002).

Figures

Figure S 1. Results of the BI analysis of concatenated mtDNA data and GMYC species delimitation analysis. (a) MCC tree from the mtDNA analysis with posterior probabilities ≥ 0.95 shown by nodes. Sample codes correspond to those in Table S 1. Branches colored in red indicate putative species identified by the GMYC species delimitation analysis. (b) Likelihood values produced by GMYC to estimate the transition between cladogenesis and intraspecific coalescence. (c) Lineage­through­time plot based on the depicted tree that shows the transition from interspecific to intraspecific branching events (red line). The time scale in (b) and (c) is relative.