PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
Series 4, Volume 64, No. 8, pp. 155-318, 66 figs., 2 tables, Appendix, Index October 31, 2017 
Atlas of the Reptiles of Libya 
Aaron M. Bauer f 2 3 , Jonathan C. DeBoer Dylan J. Taylor 1 
1 Department of Biology, Villanova University, 800 Lancaster Avenue, Villanova, Pennsylvania 19085, USA; 
2 Research Associate, Department of Herpetology, California Academy of Sciences, 
55 Music Concourse Drive, San Francisco, California 94118, USA; 
3 Corresponding author; E-mail: aaron.bauer@villanova.edu. 
Libya has one of the most depauperate reptile faunas in Africa, but it also remains 
one of the most poorly documented. Although localized collecting was carried out 
during the Italian colonial period (1912-1943), post-World War II field surveys have 
largely been limited to El Kouf National Park in northern Cyrenaica and a number 
of short duration field trips in other parts of the country. A combination of limited 
accessibility to much of the country and periods of political instability have preclud¬ 
ed more extensive herpetological research in contrast to some other regions of North 
Africa, although there has been active research by Libyan scientists in recent years. 
In order to provide a starting point for future faunal and biogeographic studies of 
Libyan reptiles, we collected locality data from 3350 museum specimens and 163 lit¬ 
erature sources, yielding 683 unique localities which we georeferenced and used to 
generate a gazetteer and corresponding index maps as well as species maps of each 
of the 66 species of reptiles confirmed to occur in Libya. Data relating to type mate¬ 
rial as well as taxonomic and distributional comments are also provided for each 
taxon. Libyan reptiles include three marine turtles (only one nesting), three terres¬ 
trial chelonians (one with two subspecies), 39 lizards (two with two subspecies), and 
21 snakes. Tarentola fascicularis (Phyllodactylidae) is a species complex represented 
by several, as yet undescribed taxa. Three subspecies and one full species of reptile 
are currently regarded as endemic to Libya, although Myriopholis lanzai, from 
southwestern Fezzan, is likely to occur in neighboring Algeria. Libya’s fauna is very 
different from that of its southern neighbors, in which Sahel taxa predominate, but 
similarities with Egypt, Tunisia, and especially Algeria, are great. The dominant bio¬ 
geographic pattern in Libya is the contrasts between the narrow Mediterranean 
zone and the arid zones of the Sahara Desert and steppe-desert transition. However, 
many species of mesic areas occur sporadically in the arid zone, usually in associa¬ 
tion with oases, and others seem euryoecious. A secondary pattern is an east-west 
division of the Mediterranean zone in the Gulf of Sirte, which separates Tripolitan- 
ian taxa with faunal ties to the Maghreb from Cyrenaican taxa with affinities to 
Egypt and even the Middle East. 
Keywords: Reptilia, Chelonia, Squamata, Libya, North Africa, Tripolitania, Fezzan, 
Cyrenaica 
The known reptile fauna of Libya is one of the poorest on the African continent (Bauer 1993), 
with only 63 terrestrial species recognized. This is partly an artifact of sampling effort, as most of 
the herpetological research in Libya was carried out before World War II, and for much of the post¬ 
war period, access to large areas of the country was limited by authoritarian restrictions or, more 
recently, by civil war and the resulting instability. However, the predicted herpetofaunal diversity 
of Libya is also low, and it is likely that relatively few additional novel taxa will be discovered, 
although undoubtedly continuing molecular phylogenetic studies will reveal more cryptic species. 
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