Trachylepis septemtaeniata (Reuss, 1834)

TYPE. Not located; Syntypes of T. s. transcaucasica in the ZIK collection, numbers unknown .

TYPE LOCALITY. “Massua, Abyssinien” [= Massawa, Eritrea] .

DISTRIBUTION. SE Anatolia, Transcaucasia, E Syria, Iraq, NE Arabian Peninsula, Iran, S Turkmenistan, E Afghanistan, and Eritrea.

DISTRIBUTION IN IRAN. Fig. 140. Most of western Iran from the Iraqi and Turkey border regions up to Yazd (ca. 53° longitude) including the Zagros range. The distribution continues in the NE along the Kopet Dagh to Turkmenistan. Trachylepis s. transcaucasica (type locality Migri and Ordubat, Armenia) occurs from northern Khuzestan Prov. to the north and NE of the country, T. s. septemtaeniata is distributed in the Mesopotamian Plain in Khuzestan and south to Fars and Bushehr Prov. Nonetheless precise boundaries between the two subspecies are not known (the subspecies are therefore not distinguished in Fig. 140); particularly because of most authors still conventionally use the binomen T. aurata for referring to the Iranian specimens.

HABITAT. Various habitats from natural sites such as stony mountain foothills with shrubby vegetation, rocky outcrops, and grassy plains. Frequently encountered near human settlements in wall cracks of abandoned houses or under debris in dumping sites.

REMARKS. The type locality in Eritrea is situated 1500 km from the rest of the range and Arnold (1986a) assumes that the specimen must have been introduced there. Akhmedov & Szczerbak (1987) pointed out that the populations from the Kopet Dagh are morphologically different from T. s. transcaucasica and might bear the subspecific name affinis de Filippi.

REFERENCES. Akhmedov & Szczerbak (1987); Bauer (2003); Faizi & Rastegar-Pouyani (2006, 2007); Moravec et al. (2006); Rastegar-Pouyani & Faizi (2007); Fathinia et al. (2009); Faizi et al. (2010); Durmus et al. (2011); Güçlü et al. (2013).