Hemidactylus robustus Heyden 1827
Creators: name: Šmíd, Jiří
name: Moravec, Jiří
name: Kodym, Petr
name: Kratochvíl, Lukáš
name: Yousefkhani, Seyyed Saeed Hosseinian
name: Rastegar-Pouyani, Eskandar
name: Frynta, Daniel
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2014
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Chordata
Reptilia
Squamata
Gekkonidae
Hemidactylus
Hemidactylus robustus

description: Hemidactylus robustus Heyden, 1827
LECTOTYPE. SMF 8720, designated by Mertens (1967).
TYPE LOCALITY. Egypten, Arabien, und Abysinien [= Egypt, Arabia, Ethiopia]; restricted to Abyssinia by Mertens (1967).
DISTRIBUTION. Arabian Peninsula, shores of the Red Sea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan.
DISTRIBUTION IN IRAN. Fig. 46. Coastal areas by the Persian Gulf in Hormozgan and Sistan and Baluchistan Prov. including Qeshm and Larak islands; the Mesopotamian Plain and probably also Qazvin Prov. Its occurrence in Iran was first indicated by Moravec & Böhme (1997) and confirmed by Bauer et al. (2006).
HABITAT. Usually found near human settlements, on walls of abandoned as well as inhabited buildings, under wooden and rocky debris.
REMARKS. There has been an ongoing discrepancy regarding the presence of H. turcicus in Iran. Hemidactylus turcicus was for long believed to occupy large territory from the western Mediterranean across the Arabian Peninsula and Mesopotamian Plain to Iran and Pakistan, until H. robustus was revalidated as a full species (Lanza 1990; Moravec & Böhme 1997) and the eastern parts of the formerly large range were assigned to the latter species. Morphologically these two species are very similar and can be easily confused. However, they are not closely related. Hemidactylus robustus belongs to a species group with mostly S Arabian distribution whereas H. turcicus is a member of a species group of Levant origin (Moravec et al. 2011; Šmíd et al. 2013a). Based on the latest summarization of the distribution of both species (Sindaco & Jeremčenko 2008) we believe that the records of H. turcicus from Iran should be referred to as H. robustus, although we have not seen the material. Also, recent records of H. turcicus from Iran (Werner 2006; Gholamifard & Rastegar-Pouyani 2011) are more likely misidentified specimens of H. robustus (see Fig. 2 in Gholamifard & Rastegar-Pouyani, 2011). Therefore all specimens determined in the source reference as H. turcicus are depicted in the map of H. robustus in Fig. 46 as dubious records. A single remote record from Turkmenistan by Obst (1984) was rejected as an accidentally imported specimen or museum error (Szczerbak & Golubev 1996). Peculiar remain also two animals collected near Qazvin by Guibé (1957) which are, however, also considered only accidental introductions along caravan routes (Anderson 1999).
REFERENCES. Moravec & Böhme (1997); Anderson (1999); Bauer et al. (2006); Gholamifard & Rastegar-Pouyani (2011); Šmíd et al. (2013a, b).
description: Published as part of 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, pp. 1-97 in Zootaxa 3855 (1) on page 20, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3855.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/4929701