Mesalina saudiarabica, 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 : 10-11

Mesalina saudiarabica Moravec, Šmíd, Schmitz, Shobrak, Wilms – sp. n.

ZooBank registration: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:8B1926 DF-E92A-41FC-B7E6-E15743A0D31C

Holotype ( Figure 4). ZFMK 91912 , subadult male, Mahazat as-Sayd, Makkah Province, Saudi Arabia, 22.237N, 41.843E, 1,000 m a.s.l., collected in October 2006 by T. Wilms. MorphoBank pictures: M407306–M407312.

Paratype. ZFMK 86583 , subadult male, Mahazat as-Sayd, near Al Muwayh, Makkah Province, Saudi Arabia, 22.395N 41.753E, 960 m a.s.l., collected in October 2006 by T. Wilms. MorphoBank picture: M410851.

Diagnosis A species of Mesalina and a member of the M. brevirostris species complex as revealed by the genetic analyses and characterised by the following combination of characters: (i) genetic (uncorrected) distance of 2.0% from M. brevirostris , 2.7% from M. bernoullii and 2.8% from M. microlepis for the 12S (after Gblocks); 2.9% from M. brevirostris , 3.3% from M. bernoullii and 4.0% from M. microlepis for the 16S (after Gblocks); 9.5% from M. brevirostris , 7.5% from M. bernoullii and 10.8% from M. microlepis for the cytb; (ii) low number of dorsal scales (41–42); (iii) low number of collar plates (6–8); (iv) low number of preanal scales (2–3); (v) low number of femoral pores in males (12–13); (vi) having 1–2 large semitransparent scales in the lower eyelid window; (vii) in life, dorsum light cinnamon–brown with a pattern of small whitish and larger dark cinnamon spots arranged in more or less regular longitudinal rows. Most of the whitish spots are not edged with dark brown colour. The dark cinnamon–brown spots predominate on flanks where they form a characteristic longitudinal lateral row that continues onto the tail. Ventral side is bright white, sharply contrasting with the colouration of the dorsum.

Detailed description of M. saudiarabica sp. n. is given in the Supplementary Materials.