Phrynocephalus helioscopus
Description
Phrynocephalus helioscopus (Pallas, 1771)
LECTOTYPE. ZMB 781, designated by Denzer et al. (1997).
TYPE LOCALITY. Originally “in deserti australioris collibus ardentissimis” (Pallas 1771); restricted to the “Inderskija Gory, Gebiet des unteren Uralflusses” [region of lower Ural River, W Kazakhstan] by Mertens & Müller (1928). This restriction was not accompanied by a lectotype or neotype designation and is therefore not valid as such (Uetz 2013).
DISTRIBUTION. SE part of European Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, NW China and Mongolia.
DISTRIBUTION IN IRAN. Fig. 14. Occurs only by the borders with Turkmenistan by the Caspian Sea.
HABITAT. Clay and stony deserts, sometimes sandy areas with high admixture of pebbles, usually in areas of sparse vegetation.
REMARKS. Phrynocephalus persicus was separated from P. helioscopus on the basis of the analysis of allozyme variation (Mezhzherin & Golubev 1989). There is an immense chaos regarding the form horvathi Méhely which was originally described as a subspecies of P. helioscopus from the foothills of Ararat, Armenia (Méhely 1894) and which is endemic to E Anatolia, S Armenia, Azerbaijan and NW Iran. In Iran it is restricted to the vicinity and north of the Lake Urmia (Melnikov et al. 2008). Some authors treat this form as it was described—a subspecies of P. helioscopus (Rastegar-Pouyani et al. 2008; Tosunoğlu et al. 2011), some as a subspecies of P. persicus (Barabanov & Ananjeva 2007; Arakelyan et al. 2011; Solovyeva et al. 2011; Milto & Barabanov 2012) and yet others as a full species (Çiçek et al. 2011). According to Anderson (1999), P. horvathi appears to be a younger synonym of P. persicus. This assumption is in accordance with the results of mtDNA analyses of P. helioscopuspersicus complex by Solovyeva et al. (2011) which proved horvathi to be an inner lineage of P. persicus. The name horvathi was stabilized by Melnikov et al. (2013), who designated neotype (see remarks by P. persicus below).
REFERENCES. Anderson (1999); Ananjeva et al. (2006); Melnikov et al. (2008); Arakelyan et al. (2011); Solovyeva et al. (2011).
Notes
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Linked records
Additional details
Identifiers
Biodiversity
- Collection code
- ZMB
- Family
- Agamidae
- Genus
- Phrynocephalus
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Material sample ID
- ZMB 781
- Order
- Squamata
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Scientific name authorship
- Pallas
- Species
- helioscopus
- Taxon rank
- species
- Type status
- lectotype
- Taxonomic concept label
- Phrynocephalus helioscopus (Pallas, 1771) sec. Šmíd, Moravec, Kodym, Kratochvíl, Yousefkhani, Rastegar-Pouyani & Frynta, 2014
References
- Pallas, P. S. (1771) Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russisches Reichs. Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, St. Petersburg, 504 pp.
- Denzer, W., Gunther, R. & Manthey, U. (1997) Kommentierter Typenkatalog der Agamen (Reptilia: Squamata: Agamidae) des Museums fur Naturkunde der Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin (ehemals Zoologisches Museum Berlin). Mitteilung aus dem Zoologischen Museum in Berlin, 73, 309 - 332. http: // dx. doi. org / 10.1002 / mmnz. 4830730209
- Mertens, R. & Muller, L. (1928) Liste der Amphibien und Reptilien Europas. Abhandlungen der Senckenbergischen Naturfoschenden Gesellschaft, 41, 1 - 62.
- Uetz, P. (2013) The Reptile database. Available from: http: // www. reptile-database. org / (accessed 8 July 2014)
- Mezhzherin, S. V. & Golubev, M. L. (1989) The genetic divergence of Phrynocephalus Kaup (Reptilia, Agamidae) of the USSR fauna [in Russian]. Reports of Ukraine SSR Academy of Sciences. Series B Geology, Chemistry and Biological Sciences, 12, 72 - 74.
- Mehely, L. (1894) Beitrage zur Herpetologie Transkaukasiens und Armeniens. Zoologischer Anzeiger, 17, 81 - 87.
- Melnikov, D. A., Ananjeva, N. B., Agasyan, A. L. & Rajabizadeh, M. (2008) Historical background and taxonomic status of the Persian toad head agama, Phrynocephalus persicus de Filippi, 1863 and Horvath's sun watcher toad head agama Phrynocephalus helioscopus horvathi Mehely, 1894. In: Ananjeva, N. B., Danilov, I. G., Dunayev, E. A., Ishchenko, V. G., Lada, G. A., Litvinchuk, S. N., Orlova, V. F., Smirina, E. M., Tuniyev, B. S. & Khalikov, R. G. (Eds.), The problems of herpetology. Proceedings of the 3 th Meeting of the Nikolsky Herpetological Society 9 - 13 October 2006, Putschino, pp. 286 - 297.
- Rastegar-Pouyani, N., Kami, H. G., Rajabzadeh, M., Shafiei, S. & Anderson, S. C. (2008) Annotated checklist of Amphibians and Reptiles of Iran. Iranian Journal of Animal Biosystematics, 4, 43 - 66.
- Tosunoglu, M., Gul, C., Topyildiz, H. & Uysal, I. (2011) Notes on Distribution, Ecology, and Morphological Characters of Phrynocephalus helioscopus horvathi Mehely, 1894 from Northeast Anatolia. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 18, 247 - 252.
- Barabanov, A. V. & Ananjeva, N. B. (2007) Catalogue of the available scientific species-group names for lizards of the genus Phrynocephalus Kaup, 1825 (Reptilia, Sauria, Agamidae). Zootaxa, 1399, 1 - 56.
- Arakelyan, M., Danielyan, F., Corti, C., Sindaco, R. & Leviton, A. E. (2011) Herpetofauna of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, Oxford, Ohio, 149 pp.
- Solovyeva, E. N., Poyarkov, N. A., Dunaev, E. A., Duysebayeva, T. N. & Bannikova, A. A. (2011) Molecular Differentiation and Taxonomy of the Sunwatcher Toad Headed Agama Species Complex Phrynocephalus Superspecies helioscopus (Pallas 1771) (Reptilia: Agamidae). Russian Journal of Genetics, 47, 842 - 856. http: // dx. doi. org / 10.1134 / s 1022795411070155
- Milto, K. D. & Barabanov, A. V. (2012) A catalogueof the agamid chamaeleonid types in the collection of the Zoological institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 19, 155 - 170.
- Cicek, K., Ayaz, D., Tok, C. V. & Tayhan, Y. (2011) Data on food composition of Phrynocephalus horvathi Mehely, 1894 (Reptilia: Agamidae) in Mount Ararat (Northeastern Anatolia, Turkey). Ecologia Balkanica, 3, 69 - 73.
- Anderson, S. C. (1999) The lizards of Iran. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, Oxford, Ohio, 442 pp.
- Melnikov, D., Melnikova, E., Nazarov, R. & Rajabizadeh, M. (2013) Taxonomic revision of Phrynocephalus persicus de Filippi, 1863 complex with description of a new species from Zagros, southern Iran. Modern Herpetology, 2013, 34 - 46.
- Ananjeva, N. B., Orlov, N., Khalikov, R. G., Darevskij, I. S., Ryabov, S. A. & Barabanov, A. V. (2006) The reptiles of the Northern Eurasia. Taxonomic diversity, distribution, conservation status. Pensoft Publishers, Sofia, 245 pp.