Blanus aporus F. Werner, 1898

Sindaco, Roberto, Kornilios, Panagiotis, Sacchi, Roberto & Lymberakis, Petros, 2014, Taxonomic reassessment of Blanus strauchi (Bedriaga, 1884) (Squamata: Amphisbaenia: Blanidae), with the description of a new species from south-east Anatolia (Turkey), Zootaxa 3795 (3), pp. 311-326 : 320

Blanus aporus F. Werner, 1898

TYPE LOCALITY: “bei Mersina” (= near Mersin, now Içel)

LECTOTYPE (by present designation): NMW 12310.

PARALECTOTYPES: BM 1946.8.2.15-16; MZUT 2119 (formerly 2439, quoted by Alexander as IMZUT).

Just three types have been located, out of ten studied by F. Werner. NMW 12310, a single individual, is the only “Mersina” specimen in Vienna collection; other specimens of Blanus from Mersin or its vicinity were collected from 1963-1967 and thus cannot be referred to Werner’s material (H. Grillitsch in litt.). Werner was Professor at the University of Vienna; he distributed many of his types among museums in other countries; only after his death, his legacy in the form of a fragmentary private collection was bought by the Vienna museum (H. Grillitsch in litt.), therefore the fate of the other seven specimens of the type-series is currently not known.

According to Alexander (1966) the specimen ZMB 19887 (quoted as ZMU) is perhaps a type as well, but Gans et al. (1997) do not list this specimen between their catalogue of the types in the Zoological Museum, Berlin.

The lectotype here designated was overlooked in the type-catalogue of Vienna Museum ( Tiedemann & Häupl 1980).

B. aporus was regarded by recent authors as a subspecies of B. strauchi . On the basis of morphological evidences shown by Alexander (1966) and Zaloğlu (1968), the high genetic divergence and the lack of shared haplotypes for the nuclear marker from both B. strauchi and the eastern clade, this taxon is better regarded at the species rank. The geographic boundaries need to be investigated; the border between B. s. bedriagae and B. aporus probably lies between Antalya and Kaş, while the border between B. aporus and the easternmost taxon lies between Içel and Kozan.