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A Preliminary Pictorial Guide to the Herpetofauna of Tigris and Euphrates River Basin

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Tigris and Euphrates Rivers: Their Environment from Headwaters to Mouth

Part of the book series: Aquatic Ecology Series ((AQEC,volume 11))

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Abstract

An extensive review on the taxonomic status, occurrence, geographical distribution, and the IUCN conservation status of 122 species/taxa (10 amphibians and 112 reptiles) belonging to 71 genera (8 genera of amphibians and 63 of reptiles) and to 25 families (5 families of amphibians and 20 families of reptiles) was made. As a part of Iraq’s unique biota, the knowledge of the herpetofauna of Iraq is poorly discovered and requires extensive field surveys, further research, and explorations in order to create full frame knowledge of its status and conservation.

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Acknowledgments

I’m are grateful to Ali N. Al-Barazengy for his further comments and personal notes on amphibians and reptiles of Iraq and his permission to allow us to access his preliminary dataset of herpetofauna of Iraq. I would like to thank Mahdi Laith Al-Haidari for his personal observations of some reptile species in Iraq.

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Al-Sheikhly, O.F. (2021). A Preliminary Pictorial Guide to the Herpetofauna of Tigris and Euphrates River Basin. In: Jawad, L.A. (eds) Tigris and Euphrates Rivers: Their Environment from Headwaters to Mouth. Aquatic Ecology Series, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57570-0_45

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