Amphibians and Reptiles of Afghanistan

The composition and distribution of the vertebrate fauna of Afghanistan remain poorly documented and in recent decades little new data have become available due to a series of wars and the resulting unstable security conditions. As Afghanistan returns to some semblance of normalcy, baseline faunistic data will be particularly important for establishing national conservation priorities as well as for placing Afghan taxas into their broader phylogenetic and zoogeographic contexts. We here provide an updated checklist of the herpetofauna of Afghanistan based in part upon biodiversity archives of specimen records from several museum and private collections as well as literature references and field research. The herpetofauna of Afghanistan consists of 118 species and subspecies belonging to 58 genera and 21 families. Seven species are endemic to the country, whereas 18 taxa have to be deleted from previous lists of the Afghan herpetofauna. Afghanistan's primary zoogeographic relationship to the Palearctic Region is reaffirmed but with secondary influence from the Oriental Region. Immediately following the checklist, two sections provide information about species probably occurring in Afghanistan and previously mentioned species that are now recognized as absent.