Trapelus ruderatus ( Olivier, 1804 )

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 : 12-13

Trapelus ruderatus ( Olivier, 1804)

NEOTYPE. MZUT R307, designated by Ananjeva et al. (2013).

TYPE LOCALITY. Near Esfahan, Esfahan Prov., Iran .

DISTRIBUTION. The range encompasses the Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent area from Jordan, Syria and Lebanon through Iraq and S Turkey to W Iran, westwards extends to central Anatolia.

DISTRIBUTION IN IRAN. Fig. 22 . The Zagros Mountains in most of the western provinces, particularly well documented in Ilam, Kermanshah and Lorestan Prov.; near Tehran penetrates to the Alborz range .

HABITAT. Exposed stony habitats with a little vegetation cover up to 2100 m of elevation ( Anderson 1999).

REMARKS. The nomenclatural status of the name Trapelus ruderatus and T. lessonae (the latter included now into the synonymy of the former) is extremely convoluted and has been thoroughly discussed within the last years. In 2000, Rastegar-Pouyani designated a lectotype of T. ruderatus (MNHN 2610) , a specimen recognized by him to be similar to a conventional population of T. persicus . Since the name ruderatus antedates the name persicus he synonymized T. persicus with T. ruderatus and restricted the type locality to that where animals most similar to the holotype occur ( Iran: Bushehr Prov.: between Bandar-e-Ganaveh - Borazjan (50°45'E, 29°35'N )). In the same paper the author recognized that the holotype of T. lessonae is morphologically identical to T. r. ruderatus and since the name ruderatus was applied to the former persicus populations, he revalidated the species status of T. lessonae . However, Ananjeva et al. (2013) pointed out that the specimen designated by Rastegar-Pouyani (2000) as a lectotype of T. ruderatus was not originally a syntype of Agama ruderata (and as such could therefore not be elevated to a lectotype according to ICZN criteria) and disregarded it to be the name-bearing type. Instead, they designated as the lectotype of Agama ruderata a specimen depicted by Olivier (1804). However, the specimen number was not given and the voucher is apparently lost. Therefore Ananjeva et al. (2013) designated the neotype of T. ruderatus , which was selected to be the holotype of Agama lessonae (MZUT R307) in order to avoid further nomenclature complications. Thus they fixed the status of A. lessonae as an objective junior synonym of A. ruderata . As a result, for the time being, the name Trapelus ruderatus is valid. Although not specifically stressed by Ananjeva et al. (2013), their taxonomic change in the T. ruderatus complex leads to re-recognition of T. persicus as a valid species. Yet another species of Trapelus described from Iran, T. microtympanum (Werner) (type locality: Persia), is considered a younger synonym of T. ruderatus by Anderson (1999, p. 109).

REFERENCES. Rastegar-Pouyani (1998a, 2000); Anderson (1999); Torki (2006, 2007a); Fathinia & RastegarPouyani (2011); Fathinia et al. (2011b); Ananjeva et al. (2013); Rastegar-Pouyani et al. (2013a).

Figures

FIGURES 20–25. 20. Trapelus agilis. Blue square denotes the type locality for T. a. khuzistanensis, dashed line delimits approximate boundary between this and the nominotypical subspecies. 21. Trapelus persicus. 22. Trapelus ruderatus. 23. Trapelus sanguinolentus. 24. Anguis colchica. 25. Pseudopus apodus.