Tropiocolotes sp.

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 : 27

Tropiocolotes sp.

DISTRIBUTION. Known only from S Iran.

DISTRIBUTION IN IRAN. Fig. 69 . Fars, Bushehr, and Hormozgan Prov. including Qeshm Island .

HABITAT. Mainland Iranian localities are situated in coastal sedimentary steppe between the Zagros and the sea. The inland localities reported by Rajabizadeh et al. (2010b) were of various vegetation and soil type, a steep flood plain with sandy soil admixed with sandstone and sparse vegetation dominated by Acacia and Ziziphus trees, a salty clayey valley with a sparsely scattered Tamarix , and a highly eroded mountain side plain characterized by sandy to clayey soil and sparse vegetation comprising Halocnemum , Salsola , and Salsoletum shrubs and Acacia , Calotropis, Prosopsis , and Ziziphus trees.

REMARKS. This species has been referred to as T. cf. steudneri in previous studies. After the populations from the central Saudi Arabia were recognized as a separate species, T. wolfgangboehmei Wilms, Shobrak & Wagner , and the distribution of T. steudneri (Peters) was confined to Africa ( Wilms et al. 2010; Sindaco et al. 2013) it became obvious that it is zoogeographically extremely unlikely that the Iranian populations belong to T. steudneri . Moreover, recent morphological analysis recovered this species very distinct from T. steudneri , being closer to T. wolfgangboehmei and T. bisharicus ( Krause et al. 2013) . Based on this evidence we therefore do not consider this species even closely related to T. steudneri . It still awaits its description.

REFERENCES. Guibé (1966b); Anderson (1999); Kamali & Dakhteh (2006); Gholamifard et al. (2010); Rajabizadeh et al. (2010b); Wilms et al. (2010); Krause et al. (2013).

Figures

FIGURES 68–73. 68. Tropiocolotes naybandensis. 69. Tropiocolotes sp. 70. Acanthodactylus blanfordii. 71. Acanthodactylus boskianus. 72. Acanthodactylus cantoris. 73. Acanthodactylus grandis.