Lacerta media Lantz & Cyrén, 1920

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 : 38

Lacerta media Lantz & Cyrén, 1920

LECTOTYPE. BMNH 1960.1 .4.38, designated by Mertens & Müller (1940).

TYPE LOCALITY. Restricted to Tbilisi, Georgia by Mertens & Müller (1940); originally “de la vallée du Tchorokh, entre Batoum et Artvine, de Borjom, des environs de Tiflis, de diverses localités de la vallée de l’Araxe, et du Kourdistan persan, a l’ouest du lac d’Ourmiah...et Novorossiisk” [Chorok River valley, between Batumi ( Georgia) and Artvin ( Turkey), Borjomi ( Georgia), environs of Tbilisi ( Georgia), several localities in the Araks River valley, Persian Kurdistan, west from Urmia Lake...and Novorossiysk (S Russia)].

DISTRIBUTION. C and E Anatolia, Levant, Transcaucasia, N and W Iran.

DISTRIBUTION IN IRAN. Fig. 110 . NW of the country along and west of the Zagros south to Esfahan Prov.

HABITAT. Places vegetated with grasses, bushes, and trees such as river valleys and river banks, field margins, tree groves, gardens, and vineyards. Lacerta media avoids dry or arid habitats.

REMARKS. The Iranian populations are assigned to the nominotypical subspecies which is sister to a central-Anatolian L. m. ciliciensis Schmidtler from which it separated 2.5 Mya ( Ahmadzadeh et al. 2013c). Both these subspecies share the adaptation to humid continental climate ( Ahmadzadeh et al. 2013d).

REFERENCES. Peters (1964); Anderson (1999); Arnold et al. (2007); Rastegar-Pouyani & Afroosheh (2011); Ahmadzadeh et al. (2013c, d); Hosseinian Yousefkhani et al. (2013f).

Figures

FIGURES 110–115. 110. Lacerta media. 111. Lacerta strigata. 112. Mesalina brevirostris. Blue square denotes the type locality for M. b. fieldi. 113. Mesalina watsonana. 114. Ophisops elegans. 115. Timon kurdistanicus.