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The former genus Stellio has already been partitioned into Laudakia Gray, 1845 and Acanthocercus Fitzinger, 1849 on the basis of several pieces of evidence. The main objective of this study is to revise Laudakia which recently includes 20 species:
L. agrorensis, L. badakshana, L. bochariensis, L. caucasia, L. dayana, L. erythrogaster, L. fusca, L. himalayana, L. lehman­ni, L. melanura, L. microlepis, L. nupta, L. nuristanica, L. pakistanica, L. papenfussi, L. sacra, L. stellio, L. stoliczkana, L. tuberculata, and L. wui. More than 600 specimens have been studied with reference to 54 morphological characters which resulted in a detailed descriptive account for each taxon. Agama isozona is recognized as a synonym of L. bochariensis. The latter species itself has been placed in a supraspecific complex consisting of L. himalayana, L. badakshana and L. bochariensis. Laudakia caucasia which has ben lowered and raised several times since its appearance is again identified as a monotypic species by placing L. caucasia triannulata as synonym under L. microlepis. Laudakia fusca was described as a variety of L. nupta but subsequent herpetologists synonymized it or recognized it as full species. According to this study L. fusca should be recognized again as subspecies of L. nupta pending more detailed further research. Moreover, several previous works have indicated that Laudakia is paraphyletic and therefore two new genera are described herein encompassing the stellio- and caucasia-groups.

Jeroen Speybroeck wrote:Yes, there's that thing.....

If you read the general introduction, at the end, it's stated that Macey et al. (2000) show paraphyly of the genus, whereas Edwards & Melville (2011) found monophyly. What follows is "In all these different studies the same groups are supported, but there is evidence of a paraphyly of the genus. Therefore, we decided to classify the different species groups in distinct genera."
???
Where's that evidence of paraphyly in E&M? Maybe I'm totally wrong, but this puzzles me. Besides that, I verrry nice study, of course! Love the dedicated morpho stuff.

(( Nomenclature : It was hinted to me Stellio was unfortunately discarded as nomen dubium, and that it would take little work to make it the valid nomen for one of the new genera))

Mario Schweiger wrote:I dont have one of these papers:

Ilias Strachinis wrote:the authors of the paper are quite "strong", aren't they