The Silk roads: phylogeography of Central Asian dice snakes (Serpentes: Natricidae) shaped by rivers in deserts and mountain valleys.

Influenced by rapid changes in climate and landscape features since the Miocene, widely distributed species provide suitable models to study the environmental impact on their evolution and current genetic diversity. The dice snake Natrix tessellata, widely distributed in the Western Palearctic is one such species. We aimed to resolve a detailed phylogeography of N. tessellata with a focus on the Central Asian clade with 4 and the Anatolia clade with 3 mitochondrial lineages, trace their origin, and correlate the environmental changes that affected their distribution through time. The expected time of divergence of both clades began at 3.7 Mya in the Pliocene, reaching lineage differentiation approximately 1 million years later. The genetic diversity in both clades is rich, suggesting different ancestral areas, glacial refugia, demographic changes, and colonization routes. The Caspian lineage is the most widespread lineage in Central Asia, distributed around the Caspian Sea and reaching the foothills of the Hindu Kush Mountains in Afghanistan, and Eastern European lowlands in the west. Its distribution is limited by deserts, mountains, and cold steppe environments. Similarly, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan lineages followed the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya water systems in Central Asia, with ranges delimited by the large Kyzylkum and Karakum deserts. On the western side, there are several lineages within the Anatolia clade that converged in the central part of the peninsula with 2 being endemic to Western Asia. The distribution of both main clades was affected by expansion from their Pleistocene glacial refugia around the Caspian Sea and in the valleys of Central Asia as well as by environmental changes, mostly through aridification.

The Fergana Valley Is an Isolate of Biodiversity: A Discussion of the Endemic Herpetofauna and Description of Two New Species of Alsophylax (Sauria: Gekkonidae) from Eastern Uzbekistan.

The high level of endemism in Fergana Valley has been well documented in numerous studies for various groups of animals and plants. In a relatively small area, there are 45 endemic plant species, five endemic insect species, and five endemic reptile species. In surveying this area for data on distribution, abundance, acoustics, and genetic samples for species of reptiles, we discovered two new species of gecko from the genus Alsophylax. Phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial DNA sequences indicate the relatives of these new species are the even-fingered gecko, Alsophylax pipiens, and the southern even-fingered gecko, Alsophylax laevis, located hundreds of kilometers to the northwest and southwest of the Fergana Valley. The threats to these new endemic species are significant given the amount of continued agricultural development that involves new territories previously considered "unsuitable" for any species of significance that is leading to the further reduction in, fragmentation of, and degradation of the remaining natural ecosystems in the Fergana Valley. The conservation of these rare and locally endemic species depends directly on the readiness of the state to create areas with IUCN I and II protection. The many studies documenting levels of endemism, along with the data published in this study, are the basis for the justification for state-protected areas in the Fergana Valley.