Mesalina watsonana (Stoliczka, 1872)

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 : 39

Mesalina watsonana (Stoliczka, 1872)

SYNTYPES. ZSI 4929 , ZSI 5050 , ZSI 5223–25 , BMNH 1946.8 .7.75 (ex. BMNH 74.4.29.1436), NMW NHMW 23474 :1–3.

TYPE LOCALITY. “ Sind ...along the right bank of the Indus between Karachi and Sakkar [Sukkur]”, Pakistan (Stoliczka 1872).

DISTRIBUTION. Iran, S Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, NW India.

DISTRIBUTION IN IRAN. Fig. 113 . The Mesopotamian Plain west of the Zagros, all of the Iranian plateau S of the Alborz and Kopet Dagh. It avoids the Dasht-e Lut and Dasht-e Kavir deserts.

HABITAT. Flat plains with hard-soil or gravelly substrate and with scattered small steppe shrubs. Usually very abundant in areas with suitable conditions. According to the modelled prediction of suitable habitat M. watsonana prefers areas with precipitation in wettest quarter of the year lower than 300 mm, precipitation in coldest quarter of the year between 40–250 mm, altitude below 2500 m, and slope with maximum 10.5° inclination ( Hosseinian Yousefkhani et al. 2013g).

REMARKS. The study of intraspecific genetic variability showed that at least four isolated lineages of M. watsonana that diverged about 7 Mya occur on the Iranian Plateau ( Šmíd & Frynta 2012). The same study recovered M. watsonana as a basal lineage of all Mesalina species.

REFERENCES. Anderson (1999); Oraei et al. (2011); Šmíd & Frynta (2012); Hosseinian Yousefkhani et al. (2013g, h, i, j).

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.