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PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
Series 4, Volume 64, No. 8 
Other “modem” publications have largely been the result of opportunistic regional collection 
or short surveys (e.g., Sayers 1964; Moravec 1995; Frynta et al. 2000; Ibrahim 2008a), but have 
nonetheless provided important records in such a poorly collected country. The work of Ibrahim 
and Ineich (2005), reporting new records from Nalut added 16 species of reptiles to the fauna of 
the province. Other significant recent research has included that of Roberto Sindaco, whose faunal 
studies of the Palearctic, including Libya (Sindaco 1995,1998; Sindaco and Jeremcenko 2008; Sin¬ 
daco et al. 2013) have provided a baseline for zoogeography of the region. Most additional 21 st cen¬ 
tury research dealing with the reptiles of Libya has been in the area of molecular phylogenetics and 
phylogeography. A large number of papers by Harris, Carranza, Rato, Kapli, Crochet and Metalli- 
nou among others have included at least some Libyan material in their studies of North African 
taxa, much of it based on material from the Natural History Museum of Crete, one of the only col¬ 
lections of Libyan material for which tissue samples are available. Only recently have Libyan 
researchers begun to publish on their own herpetofauna, particularly sea turtles (Hamza et al. 2009; 
Hamza 2010; Haddoud and El Gomati 2011), but also on the terrestrial fauna from both a faunal 
perspective (Essghaier et al. 2015) and a taxon specific one (Bshaena 2011; Bshaena and Joger 
2013). 
Material and Methods 
Data were gathered from museum records and from published sources. Approximately 3350 
museum records were obtained from the GBIF database, from collection queries to institutional 
online databases, and from specific requests to curators and collections managers. Numerous muse¬ 
ums, including some of those with the largest collections of Libyan reptiles were visited by the 
authors (see Acknowledgments). A complete list of collection abbreviations used in this paper is 
presented in Table 1. Literature records were extracted from 163 publications explicitly mention¬ 
ing Libyan material or providing specific localities within Libya. Our data includes reptile records 
from 683 localities (196 in Tripolitania, 129 in Fezzan, and 358 in Cyrenaica) (Fig. 2) and 2061 
unique taxon-locality combinations. All localities are listed in the Appendix and are plotted in 
index maps (Figs. 3-6). Data were compiled into a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel 2013 (available 
form the senior author) in which original identifications and verbatim localities were entered, as 
well as current identifications and locality names and coordinates. Uncertainty estimates and the 
georeferencing source are also included in this file. 
Nomenclature for all records was updated on the basis of current taxonomy and phylogenetic 
information. Many of the taxa included in this atlas have recently undergone, or are still undergo¬ 
ing, major revisions and some identifications remain tentative. These cases are noted in the corre¬ 
sponding Comments sections of each species account. Phyllodactylid geckos of the genus Taren- 
tola pose a particular problem and there are numerous undescribed species (see Bshaena 2011) 
which are here combined under a single entry, Tarentola fascicularis Complex. The gekkonid 
gecko pairs Stenodactylus sthenodactylus/mauritanicus and S. petrii/stenurus are also problemat¬ 
ic, as recent phylogenetic and taxonomic work reveals that many older species identifications are 
likely incorrect and all Libyan specimens in this genus should be reexamined to confirm identity. 
Acanthodactylus species are another source of possible error as many old records refer to species 
now regarded as absent from Libya and the similarity of some species may have resulted in 
misidentification. To the extent possible we have addressed these problems in the Comments sec¬ 
tions of the relevant species accounts. 
Although some more recent data were provided in a georeferenced format, most earlier records 
were listed by place name only. These were georeferenced following the recommendations of 
Guralnick et al. (2006) and Chapman and Wieczorek (2006) using BioGeomancer, Google Earth, 
