Gloydius halys caucasicus (Nikolskii, 1916:274)

Wagner, Philipp, Bauer, Aaron M., Leviton, Alan E., Wilms, Thomas M. & Böhme, Wolfgang, 2016, A Checklist of the Amphibians and Reptiles of Afghanistan *, Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 63 (13), pp. 457-565 : 517

Gloydius halys caucasicus (Nikolskii, 1916:274)

1916 Ancistrodon halys caucasicus Nikolskii, Fauna Rossij i sopredelnykh stran. Presmykajuszczijasja. Tom II. Ophidia [Faune de la Russie et des pays limitrophes. Reptiles ( Reptilia). Vol. II. Ophidia]. Tipografija Imperatorskoj Akademin Nauk, Petrograd [St. Petersburg], Russia. III + 349 + (1) pp., pls. I–VIII.

LECTOTYPE.— MNKNU 14942 , from “Dzhi vill., Arussk. Obshch., Lenkoran uezd [Dzhi village, Lenkoran district, Azerbaijan]” (designated by Vedmederya et al. [2009])

LOCALITIES.— Sauzak Pass, nr. Herat (ZMUC R-6912) [see pl. 14, fig. 5 for distribution].

REMARKS.— Leviton and Anderson (1970) mentioned this species as Agkistrodon halys from a single record of the Universitetets Zoologiske Museum, Copenhagen. Later, Nilson (1983) recognized it as the taxon caucasicus and placed it as subspecies into Gloydius intermedius . Howev- er, some authors (e.g., David and Ineich 1999, Orlov and Barabanov “1999” 2000, Gumprecht et al. 2004, Sindaco et al. 2013) accepted it as the same subspecies, but placed it again into G. halys . In any case, according to Gloyd and Conant (1982), this represents the easternmost record for the taxon caucasicus.

In 2000, Orlov and Barabanov (“1999” 2000) designated ZISP 19017 .1 from “ Azerbaijan, Lenkoran District, vicinity of the Kirovsk town ” as neotype , stating that all original types were lost. However, Vedmederya et al. (2009) were able to show that one of the syntypes still exist- ed and designated it as the lectotype.