Agamidae

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 : 149-150

Agamidae

Paralaudakia Baig, Wagner, Ananjeva et Böhme, 2012

The genus is represented in Mongolia by Paralaudakia stoliczkana (Blanford, 1875) with dispersed populations located in the south-western areas ( ANANJEVA et al. 1997, READING et al. 1999, TERBISH et al. 2006, BAIG et al. 2012). Two subspecies have been described and delimitated by morphological characters: P. s. stoliczkana (Blandford, 1875) and P. s. altaica (Munkhbayar et Shagdarsuren, 1970). Whereas the nominal subspecies occurs in central-southern Mongolia to northern China, P. s. altaica is present in Gobi Altai area (see BAIG et al. 2012). Phylogeographic patterns of both taxa remain unknown.

The HNHM collection presents one jar with one specimen collected by Kaszab and further 7 specimens collected by other researchers (see Fig. 6 and Appendix) .

Phrynocephalus Kaup, 1825

The genus Phrynocephalus is one of the taxonomically most complicated Palaearctic lizard group ( WANG & FU 2004, BARAVANOV & ANANJEVA 2007, MACEY et al. 2018, SOLOVYEVA et al. 2018). Based on BARAVANOV and ANANJEVA (2007) and ANANJEVA et al. (2011), two species of Phrynocephalus are reported for Mongolia: P. (Phrynocephalus) helioscopus (Pallas, 1771) , represented by the subspecies P. h. varius Eichwald, 1831, only present in the westernmost region of the country; and P. (Phrynocephalus) versicolor Strauch, 1876 , a polytypic species with a complex intraspecific taxonomy, which was traditionally represented by two subspecies in Mongolia: P. v. versicolor , widely distributed over the southern regions and P. v. kulagini Bedriaga, 1909 , limited to the northwestern area (BARAVANOV & ANANJEVA 2007). Previous molecular studies did not include samples from Mongolia ( WANG & FU 2004), but recently, SOLOV- YEVA et al. (2018) increased the sampling effort including Mongolian populations. As a result of their study, these authors recognized Phrynocephalus kulagini as a full species. Another problematic taxon within the P. versicolor group is P. hispidus. It was treated as a synonym of the nominal subspecies since BARABANOV and ANANJEVÁs (2007) catalogue, but according to DUNAYEV and POYARKOV (2010) and ORLOVA et al. (2014), it must represent a valid independent subspecific or specific taxon. This problem has been solved by SOLOV- YEVA et al. (2018), by recognizing this taxon as a full species Phrynocephalus hispidus. Morphological differences between P. versicolor and P. kulagini are mostly based on coloration pattern and scale morphology ( BEDRIAGA 1909), whereas young and juveniles of Phrynocephalus hispidus possess the tip of the tail white coloured, not black as in the other Mongolian taxa ( DUNAYEV & POYARKOV 2010, ORLOVA et al. 2014). The species of the P. versicolor group are parapatrically distributed within Mongolia; the most widespread, P. versicolor , occurs across the southeastern region, while the presence of P. kulagini is restricted to the north-western region, and P. hispidus to the south-western region of the country.

All specimens of Phrynocephalus studied from the HNHM collection corresponded to P. versicolor species group. Most of the material, particularly those from the Southern Govi areas can be assigned to P. v. versicolor (see Appendix). A few other can be assigned to P. kulagini based on their coloration and scale patterns and their geographic range, but similar coloration patterns can be found scattered amongst otherwise characteristic P. versicolor populations. Tentatively, we assigned the populations placed over the southwestern area of the Dzungaria region to the taxon P. hispidus based on the geographic range of this taxon ( ORLOVA et al. 2014)

The HNHM collection hosts 415 specimens collected by Kaszab and additional 37 specimens collected by other researchers (see Fig. 6 and Appendix) .