Caucasian rock lizards
| Caucasian rock lizards | ||||||||||||
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Armenian rock lizard ( Darevskia armeniaca ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Darevskia | ||||||||||||
| Arribas , 1997 |
The genus of the Caucasian rock lizards ( Darevskia ) occurs in the Caucasus , in the Crimea , and in northern and eastern Anatolia east to the Elburs Mountains in northern Iran and the Kopet Dag Mountains on the border between Turkmenistan and Iran. D. praticola also reaches the eastern Balkan peninsula .
The genus was named after Ilya Darevsky , a Russian herpetologist .
features
Caucasian rock lizards are small lizards with a head-to-trunk length of 50 to 85 mm. The head and body of some species are flattened. There are seven teeth on the premaxillary (often nine in D. chlorogaster ), and the wing bone is edentulous. The hemipenis of the males has crown-shaped tubercles.
The basic color of the lizards is brown, gray or green, there are also longitudinal stripes on the back, the sides can be marbled. There is often a bruise on the shoulder region. The ventral side is often bright yellow, orange or red in color, or less conspicuously green or yellow-green, and mostly unspotted. The transition between belly and flank coloring is often marked with blue dots. The throat may be a different color from the abdomen. The glowing abdominal color is usually absent in the parthenogenetic species. There is no noticeable gender dimorphism in terms of coloration. The males of most, but not all, species grow larger than the females. Young animals often have bright greenish or blue tails.
Way of life
Most Caucasian rock lizards live in rocky biotopes and use crevices as hiding places. D. brauneri darevskii and D. chlorogaster are associated with dead wood, while D. derjugini, D. clarkorum, D. dryada and D. praticola live in herbaceous biotopes on the ground. Some species are pronounced mountain dwellers.
All Darevskia species are oviparous, i.e. they lay eggs. Some species ( D. armeniaca, D. bendimahiensis, D. dahli, D. rostombekowi, D. sapphirina, D. unisexualis and D. uzzelli ) are parthenogenic ; in these species there are only females who lay unfertilized eggs from which young hatch. It is believed that the parthenogenetic species arose from the hybridization of bisexual species.
species
- Darevskia alpina (Darevsky, 1967)
- Armenian rock lizard ( Darevskia armeniaca (Méhely, 1909))
- Darevskia bendimahiensis (Eiselt & Schmidtler, 1994)
- Darevskia brauneri (Méhely, 1909)
- Darevskia caspica Ahmadzadeh, Flecks, Carretero, Mozaffari, Böhme, Harris, Freitas & Rödder, 2013
- Darevskia caucasica (Méhely, 1909)
- Darevskia chlorogaster (Boulenger, 1908)
- Darevskia clarkorum (Darevsky & Vedmederja, 1977)
- Darevskia daghestanica (Darevsky, 1967)
- Darevskia dahli (Darevsky, 1957)
- Darevskia defilippii (Camerano, 1877)
- Darevskia derjugini (Nikolskij, 1898)
- Darevskia dryada (Darevsky & Tuniyev, 1997)
- Darevskia kamii Ahmadzadeh, Flecks, Carretero, Mozaffari, Böhme, Harris, Freitas & Rödder, 2013
- Darevskia kopetdaghica Ahmadzadeh, Flecks, Carretero, Mozaffari, Böhme, Harris, Freitas & Rödder, 2013
- Crimean rock lizard ( Darevskia lindholmi (Lantz & Cyrén, 1936))
- Darevskia mixta (Méhely, 1909)
- Darevskia parvula (Lantz & Cyrén, 1913)
- Darevskia portschinskii (Kessler, 1878)
- Caucasian meadow lizard ( Darevskia praticola (Eversmann, 1834))
- Darevskia raddei (Uzzell & Darevsky, 1973)
- Darevskia rostombekovi (Darevsky, 1957)
- Darevskia rudis (Bedriaga, 1886)
- Darevskia Sapphirina (Schmidtler, 1994)
- Darevskia saxicola (Eversmann, 1834)
- Darevskia schaekeli Ahmadzadeh, Flecks, Carretero, Mozaffari, Böhme, Harris, Freitas & Rödder, 2013
- Darevskia steineri (Eiselt, 1995)
- Darevskia unisexualis (Darevsky, 1966)
- Darevskia uzzelli (Darevsky & Danielyan, 1977)
- Darevskia valentini (Boettger, 1892)
literature
- E. Nicholas Arnold, Oscar Arribas, Salvador Carranza: Systematics of the Palaearctic and Oriental lizard tribe Lacertini (Squamata: Lacertidae: Lacertinae), with descriptions of eight new genera (= Zootaxa . 1430). Magnolia Press, Auckland 2007, digital version (PDF; 2.76 MB) .
- Faraham Ahmadzadeh, Morris Flecks, Miguel A. Carretero, Omid Mozaffari, Wolfgang Böhme , D. James Harris, Susana Freitas, Dennis Rödder : Cryptic Speciation Patterns in Iranian Rock Lizards Uncovered by Integrative Taxonomy. In: PLoS ONE . Vol. 8, No. 12, 2013, e80563, doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0080563 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Arnold, Arribas & Carranza, 2007, p. 41.
