Tarentola mindiae Baha el Din, A, 2017

Bauer, Aaron M., DeBoer, Jonathan C. & Taylor, Dylan J., 2017, Atlas of the Reptiles of Libya, Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 64 (8), pp. 155-318 : 208

Tarentola mindiae Baha el Din 1997:31 , figs. 1–2

1997 Tarentola mindiae Baha el Din, A new species of Tarentola ( Squamata: Gekkonidae ) from the Western Desert of Egypt. African Journal of Herpetology 46:30–35.

HOLOTYPE.— FMNH 252492 , “ 30°32′N 28°32′E south of Mingar Abu Dweis in the Qattara Depression, Egypt.”

Tarentola mindiae, Sindaco and Jeremčenko 2008:136 .

DISTRIBUTION.— Northwestern Egypt west of the Nile and adjacent inland eastern Libya, chiefly in association with low-lying oases and other areas of relatively dense vegetation.

Libyan Records (Map 24): CYRE-

NAICA: BUTNAN: 520: Vinciguerra 1931;

Zavattari 1934; Loveridge 1947. 521: Vinciguerra 1927; Zavattari 1929, 1930, 1934;

Gestro and Vinciguerra 1931; Zavattari 1937;

Loveridge 1947; Ibrahim 2008b. AL WAHAT:

564: BMNH 1932.3.6. 5; Baha El Din 2006a ;

Bshaena 2011.

COMMENTS:.— This species is only known with certainty in Libya from a single specimen. A distribution map in Bshaena

(2011) mapped two Libyan localities near the

Egyptian border, however, in the text the same author was explicit that there was only a single record. Baha El Din (1997, 2006a) suggested that the distribution of this species was likely to extend from the Qattara Depression and Siwa

Oasis westward into Cyrenaica south of the MAP 24. Distribution of Tarentola mindiae in Libya. Jabal al Akhdar, and this broad distribution has been depicted on the map accompanying the IUCN assessment of the species ( Baha El Din 2006b). He further suggested that many inland Libyan records from T. mauritanica (i.e., T. fascicularis ) might actually be referable to T. mindiae and explicitly mentioned the record of Loveridge (1947) from Giarabub (Jaghbub) as a probable example. Sindaco and Jeremčenko (2008) did not plot the confirmed Jalu record, but did plot the Giarabub locus. We here include both the Giarabub and nearby Hish as Sahabi (Es Sahabi) rcords as probable T. mindiae , although we have not confirmed this.

IUCN THREAT STATUS.— Least Concern.