New Chromosome Count on Endemic Subspecies of Laceta princeps subsp. Princeps (Lacertidae) from Iran

Abstract

Lacerta princeps subsp. princeps is endemic to Iran and found from the new locality of north slops of Dena mountain near Cisakhat in this study. Mitotic chromosome studies on bone marrow cells of male and female revealed 2n=35 and 2n=36 chromosomes respectively. The karyotype consists of 34 autosome chromosomes including: one pair of biarmed metacentric macrochromosome, 15 pairs of uniarmed chromosomes and one pair of microchromosome. in addition, it seems that male has 1 uniarmed X chromosome and female has 2 uniarmed XY chromosomes, which Y chromosome was smaller than X. The presence of 1 pair biarmed metacentric macrochromosome in L. perinceps princeps separates this species from another species that examined from karyologically point of view. It seems that this pair chromosome originate from the fusion of 2 telocentric chromosomes. Chromosome count for this subspecies is reported here for the first time.