Ophiomorus persicus ( Steindachner, 1867 )

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 : 46

Ophiomorus persicus ( Steindachner, 1867)

SYNTYPES. NMW 10398 :1–2 and NMW 10399 :1–2.

TYPE LOCALITY. Originally “ Persia ”; restricted to 5 km SE Pol-e Abgineh, Fars Prov., Iran by Anderson & Leviton (1966b).

DISTRIBUTION. Endemic to Iran.

DISTRIBUTION IN IRAN. Fig. 136 . Kohgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmad, Fars , and Kerman Prov.

HABITAT. The specimen collected by Kiabi et al. (1999) was found on sandy-clay soil near an Artemisia bush, under which it was trying to hide. The area represents a transitional zone between mountains and alluvial fans with very abundant Artemisia shrubs.

REMARKS. Ophiomorus persicus together with O. latastii Günther from the Levant and O. punctatissimus from the Balkans form a western group of Ophiomorus ( Anderson & Leviton 1966b) . Ophiomorus persicus is a basal lineage of the genus based on morphological and osteological characters ( Greer & Wilson 2001).

REFERENCES. Anderson & Leviton (1966b); Anderson (1999); Kiabi et al. (1999); Greer & Wilson (2001).

Figures

FIGURES 134–139. 134. Ophiomorus maranjabensis. 135. Ophiomorus nuchalis. 136. Ophiomorus persicus. 137. Ophiomorus streeti. 138. Ophiomorus tridactylus. 139. Scincus scincus. Blue square denotes the type locality for S. s. conirostris.