BAUER, DEBOER, & TAYLOR: ATLAS OF THE REPTILES OF LIBYA 
169 
sions about the likely meaning of verbatim localities. For example, a point “15 km north of Ras 
Lanuf, “ if interpreted literally, would lie in the western Gulf of Sirte, so we interpreted this to mean 
15 km by road in the most northerly direction possible, or in this case 15 km WNW of Ras Lanuf 
on the coast road. In most cases, unless there was information to the contrary, we interpreted dis¬ 
tances as road distances and we assumed that points between two named localities were along the 
most direct or largest road. Undoubtedly some of our assumptions will have resulted in errors, but 
we are generally confident in our georeferencing. Difficult or contentious cases are discussed indi¬ 
vidually in the relevant species accounts. To facilitate future work, we provide a gazetteer (see 
Appendix) of all of the unique localities cited herein along with relevant caveats about its use and 
interpretation. Localities have all been numbered and listed by current name (or one of several 
romanizations in current use), with alternative place names, especially those used in the herpeto- 
logical literature) listed secondarily. 
In the gazetteer, some named localities have more than one set of corresponding coordinates. 
This apparent inconsistency stems from a variety of sources. In some cases coordinates reflect pre¬ 
cise values provided with the record (i.e., previously georeferenced museum records), in other 
cases these may be rounded to the nearest quarter degree (e.g., some records from Kramer and 
Schnurrenberger 1963, see above), or we may have georeferenced them ourselves using a variety 
of sources. For example, many localities could not be located in existing hard copy or on-line 
gazetteers and necessitated the use of older maps, with varying degrees of accuracy. In other cases, 
for example many oases, one place name (e.g., Kufrah, Jufra, etc.) refers to a large area and unless 
specific information is available different authors may have interpreted these place names differ¬ 
ently. Urban areas are another problem. Many species have been cited from Tripoli and/or Beng¬ 
hazi, but both are sprawling urban areas and where, precisely, any specimen may have originated 
is generally unknown and unknowable. Indeed, many specimens with the locality “Tripolis” may 
be from outside the city. In compiling these data we estimated uncertainty levels, but we consider 
these estimates to be crude at best. As a result, we believe that the data may be used reliably to gain 
a general idea of species distribution within Libya (at least for those areas that have been sampled) 
or to interpret correlations with major vegetation types, biogeographic barriers or other gross envi¬ 
ronmental variables. However, detailed analyses requiring fine scale distributional data, such as 
predictive niche modeling, would not be advised given the nature of the spatial data. 
Atlas of the Reptiles of Libya 
Organization of Accounts. — Each species occurring in Libya is listed by family under the 
currently accepted scientific name with authority, date and page of description (plus figures or 
plates, if relevant). The full citation to the corresponding description is provided, as are those of 
any synonyms based on Libyan material (or to which Libyan material might refer if the taxonom¬ 
ic status of Libyan populations is unresolved), each with data about the corresponding type mate¬ 
rial, including the identity and whereabouts of the type or types and a verbatim statement of the 
published type locality. This is followed by abbreviated citations to the taxon in several standard 
references for the herpetology of the North Africa which include Libya. These are: Le Berre (1989) 
covering the Sahara broadly, Schleich et al. (1996) covering North Africa, Kramer and Schnurren¬ 
berger (1963) on the snakes of Libya, Sindaco and Jeremcenko (2008; lizards, crocodylians and 
chelonians) and Sindaco et al. (2013; snakes) covering the reptiles of the Western Palearctic, and 
Trape et al. (2012) treating the lizards, crocodiles, and turtles of West Africa and the Sahara. Schle¬ 
ich et al. (1996), in particular should be consulted for biological information and for vernacular 
names in Arabic and other languages. Specific distributional data, along with a gazetteer are pro- 
