Lacertidae

Sánchez-Vialas, Alberto, Calvo, Marta, García-París, Mario & Vörös, Judit, 2019, Amphibians And Reptiles From Zoltan Kaszab’S Expeditions To Mongolia Held At The Hungarian Natural History Museum, Acta Zoologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 65 (2), pp. 143-166 : 151-152

Lacertidae

Eremias Fitzinger, 1834

The diversity of Mongolian Eremias is underestimated ( ORLOVA et al. 2017). Currently, this genus is represented in Mongolia by six described species: Eremias argus Peters, 1869 , widely distributed in most of the eastern half of the country with a few isolated populations in western-central areas (MUNKHBA- YAR 1981, READING et al. 1999, TERBISH et al. 2006) and represented by two subspecies: E. a. argus along the eastern areas, and E. a. barbouri Schmidt, 1925, for the western populations ( ANANJEVA et al. 1997); Eremias arguta (Pallas, 1773) , represented in Mongolia by E. a. potanini Bedriaga, 1912, highly localized in the Dzungarian Govi Desert ( ANANJEVA et al. 1997, TERBISH et al. 2006); Eremias multiocellata Günther, 1872 , widely distributed in Mongolia, was formerly represented by E. m. multiocellata Günther, 1872 , E. m. bannikowi Szczerbak, 1973, E. m. kozlowi Bedriaga, 1907 and E. m. tsaganbogdensis Munkhabayar & Borkin, 2010, however, its taxonomic status is complex: (1) Eremias m. tsaganbogdensis, that inhabits the Tsagan Bogde Uul Mountains in southern Mongolia ( MUNKHBAYAR & BORKIN 2010), is more closely related to E. przewalskii than to E. multiocellata s. str., but further studies are needed to solve its taxonomic status ( ORLOVA et al. 2017), (2) E. m. bannikowi is a junior synomym of E. m. multiocellata ( ORLOVA et al. 2017) , (3) the validity of the taxonomic status of E. m. kozlowi remains unknown as no specimen from the type locality has been studied within a molecular phylogenetic framework ( ORLOVA et al. 2017), and finally (4) the nominotypic subspecies comprises two mitochondrial clades in Mongolia: one corresponding to E. m. multiocellata , distributed over southern and north-western regions, and the other clade (named as “sand form B” by ORLOVA et al. 2017) distributed over the eastern region (SZCERBAK 1973, 1974, ORLOVA et al. 2017); Eremias przewalskii (Strauch, 1878) , is represented in Mongolia by two non-reciprocally monophyletic clades: one including the most widespread lineage across central and north-western region, corresponding to the nominal subspecies and its junior synonym E. p. tuvensis Szcerbak, 1974, and the other clade, closely related to two undescribed lineages, corresponding to another taxonomic unit distributed over southern Mongolia ( ANANJEVA et al. 1997, ROGOVIN et al. 2001, TERBISH et al. 2006, SZCERBAK 1974, ORLOVA 1992, ORLOVA et al. 2017). Eremias vermiculata Blandford, 1875 , in Mongolia is restricted to southern regions (the Trans Altai Govi and Alashan Govi) with two locations in the Northern Govi ( ANANJEVA et al. 1997, TERBISH et al. 2006). Finally, the recently described E. dzungarica Orlova, Poyarkov, Chirikova, Nazarov, Munkhbaatar, Munkhbayar & Terbish, 2017, inhabits the rocky areas of the Mongolian Dzungaria ( ORLOVA et al. 2017).

The species represented in HNHM’s materials are: E. argus (49), E. multiocellata (123), E. dzungarica (4), E. przewalskii (45) and E. arguta (1) (see Fig. 7 and Appendix).