Hemidactylus robustus Heyden, 1827

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 : 20

Hemidactylus robustus Heyden, 1827

LECTOTYPE. SMF 8720 , designated by Mertens (1967).

TYPE LOCALITY. Egypten, Arabien, und Abysinien [= Egypt, Arabia, Ethiopia]; restricted to Abyssinia by Mertens (1967).

DISTRIBUTION. Arabian Peninsula, shores of the Red Sea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan.

DISTRIBUTION IN IRAN. Fig. 46 . Coastal areas by the Persian Gulf in Hormozgan and Sistan and Baluchistan Prov. including Qeshm and Larak islands; the Mesopotamian Plain and probably also Qazvin Prov. Its occurrence in Iran was first indicated by Moravec & Böhme (1997) and confirmed by Bauer et al. (2006).

HABITAT. Usually found near human settlements, on walls of abandoned as well as inhabited buildings, under wooden and rocky debris.

REMARKS. There has been an ongoing discrepancy regarding the presence of H. turcicus in Iran. Hemidactylus turcicus was for long believed to occupy large territory from the western Mediterranean across the Arabian Peninsula and Mesopotamian Plain to Iran and Pakistan, until H. robustus was revalidated as a full species ( Lanza 1990; Moravec & Böhme 1997) and the eastern parts of the formerly large range were assigned to the latter species. Morphologically these two species are very similar and can be easily confused. However, they are not closely related. Hemidactylus robustus belongs to a species group with mostly S Arabian distribution whereas H. turcicus is a member of a species group of Levant origin ( Moravec et al. 2011; Šmíd et al. 2013a). Based on the latest summarization of the distribution of both species ( Sindaco & Jeremčenko 2008) we believe that the records of H. turcicus from Iran should be referred to as H. robustus , although we have not seen the material. Also, recent records of H. turcicus from Iran ( Werner 2006; Gholamifard & Rastegar-Pouyani 2011) are more likely misidentified specimens of H. robustus (see Fig. 2 in Gholamifard & Rastegar-Pouyani, 2011). Therefore all specimens determined in the source reference as H. turcicus are depicted in the map of H. robustus in Fig. 46 as dubious records. A single remote record from Turkmenistan by Obst (1984) was rejected as an accidentally imported specimen or museum error ( Szczerbak & Golubev 1996). Peculiar remain also two animals collected near Qazvin by Guibé (1957) which are, however, also considered only accidental introductions along caravan routes ( Anderson 1999).

REFERENCES. Moravec & Böhme (1997); Anderson (1999); Bauer et al. (2006); Gholamifard & Rastegar-Pouyani (2011); Šmíd et al. (2013a, b).

Figures

FIGURES 44–49. 44. Hemidactylus flaviviridis. 45. Hemidactylus persicus. 46. Hemidactylus robustus. Question marks indicate dubious data or specimens determined as H. turcicus. 47. Hemidactylus romeshkanicus. 48. Mediodactylus aspratilis. 49. Mediodactylus heterocercum.

FIGURES 2–7. 2. Provinces of Iran with their capitals. Names of provinces are in bold, capitals in plain. 3. Major geographic features of Iran and neighbouring countries. 4. Geographic distribution of all presence records assembled for this work. 5. All records mapped on a 0.25° × 0.25° grid. 6. Calotes versicolor. 7. Laudakia caucasia.