Eumeces schneideri (Daudin, 1802) ssp. princeps (Eichwald, 1839)

Jablonski, Daniel, Khalili, Faizurrahman & Masroor, Rafaqat, 2023, The herpetofaunal diversity of Takhar Province, Afghanistan, Herpetozoa 36, pp. 73-90 : 73

Eumeces schneideri (Daudin, 1802) ssp. princeps (Eichwald, 1839)

Fig. 6

Takhar records.

Farkhar, Chashmay-e-Garmak, 36.4223°N, 69.9155°E, 1459 m a.s.l., 12 June 2020, rocky habitat in the river valley, one subadult individual of unknown sex (CUHC-PA 196).

Distribution in Afghanistan.

The genus Eumeces (see Remarks) is known from Badakhshan, Badghis, Helmand, Kandahar ( Wagner et al. 2016) and Takhar Provinces. This represents 15% of all provinces in the country.

Chorotype.

Mediterranean + Arabian + Iranian + Turanian.

Remarks.

This is the first-ever record of this species from Takhar Province. However, it is not exactly clear what species it is and where it is distributed in Afghanistan. According to recently published phylogeography of E. schneiderii ( Faizi et al. 2021), two species of this group should be present in Afghanistan: E. zarudnyi (Nikolskii, 1900) [elevated to species status by Faizi et al. (2021)] in southern Afghanistan and E. schneiderii princeps in northern parts of the country (Fig. 1 in Faizi et al. (2021)). This suggests that Takhar Province is inhabited by the latter taxon. However, to come to this conclusion, we are missing good morphological or genetic data that could confirm our assumption. Wagner et al. (2016) report E. blythianus (Anderson, 1871) for Afghanistan, based on a single record and specimen (ZFMK 41118) from “Seberghan” (36.66°N, 65.75°E) in the northern part of the country. This record should be verified since we expect that the specimen could represent the E. schneiderii group due to its record north of the Hindu Kush mountains ( E. blythianus is known mostly from Pakistan; Masroor (2009); Faizi et al. (2017)).

Figures

Figure 1. Herpetologically investigated localities of Takhar Province, Afghanistan.

Figure 6. Herpetofaunistic records of Anguidae, Gekkonidae, Lacertidae, Scincidae and Varanidae from Takhar Province in the context of updated records from Afghanistan (white dots: published data; red dots: new data).