The Results of Four Recent Joint Expeditions to the Gobi Desert: Lacertids and Agamids

Abstract

The National University of Mongolia, the Mongolian State University of Education, the University of Nebraska, and the University of Kansas conducted four collaborative expeditions between 2010 and 2014, resulting in accounts for all species of lacertid and agamid, except Phrynocephalus kulagini. These expeditions resulted in a range extension for Eremias arguta and the collection of specimens and tissues across 134 unique localities. In this paper we summarize the species of the Agamidae (Paralaudakia stoliczkana, Ph. hispidus, Ph. helioscopus, and Ph. versicolor) and Lacertidae (E. argus, E. arguta, E. dzungarica, E. multiocellata, E. przewalskii, and E. vermiculata) that were collected during these four expeditions. Further, we provide a summary of all species within these two families in Mongolia. Finally, we discuss issues of Wallacean and Linnaean shortfalls for the herpetofauna of the Mongolian Gobi Desert, and provide future directions for studies of community assemblages and population genetics of reptile species in the region.

Range-Wide Phylogeography and Ecological Niche Modeling Provide Insights into the Evolutionary History of the Mongolian Racerunner (Eremias argus) in Northeast Asia

“…We excluded those variables with Pearson correlation coefficients r > 0.8 based on pairwise comparison of raster files in SDMtoolbox v2.0 [64]. We obtained 96 occurrence records of E. argus from the individuals sampled in this study, and 220 occurrence records downloaded from GBIF (https://www.gbif.org/ (accessed on 3 May 2022)) and the literature (e.g., [32,[77][78][79]) (see Table S6). All sampling sites were also rarified at a spatial distance of 120 km using SDMtoolbox v2.0 [64], resulting in a total of 74 sampling sites (see Table S7).…”