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10 - ZOOGEOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF THE LIZARD FAUNA OF IRAN

from PART 1 - THE LAND

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
S. C. Anderson
Edited by
W. B. Fisher
S. C. Anderson
Affiliation:
California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

An understanding of present distribution patterns of organisms in South-west Asia is essential to any meaningful generalizations concerning biogeography on a world-wide basis. The vast arid physiographically complex tract stretching across all of North Africa, Southwest Asia, and north-western India today forms a barrier to the exchange of faunal elements of tropical and sub-tropical Africa with Europe, south-eastern Asia, and Central Asia. The extent to which communication between these faunas may have existed at various times in the past can be postulated only on the basis of our knowledge of palaeogeography, past climatic conditions, and the distribution of living and fossil organisms.

The area covered by this paper is delimited by the political boundaries of Iran, which might be regarded as one of the most geographically complex areas of South-west Asia, and is centrally located with respect to the mingling of elements of the North African, southern Asian, Central Asian and European herpetofaunas (Anderson, 1963).

While many systematic problems remain on all levels, it is nonetheless possible to make a few generalizations regarding the zoogeography of South-west Asia, and Iran in particular. Thus far no zoogeographic analysis of the whole of South-west Asia has been attempted, and only the most cursory remarks on the zoogeography of the amphibians and reptiles of Iran have been published (Blanford, 1876; Wettstein, 1951; Anderson, 1964). In this report an effort is made to answer in the broadest sense the following questions: (1) What are the major distributional patterns? (2) What are the historical origins of these patterns?

Keywords

descriptive zoogeographyecological zoogeographyIranian Plateauand historical zoogeographylizard fauna
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Iran , pp. 305 - 371
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1968

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