The Persian Long-tailed Desert Lizard, Mesalina watsonana, is one of the most common and most widely distributed lizards on the Iranian Plateau extending from Iran to Pakistan and Afghanistan. The species is frequently encountered in various types of habitats. We collected over 600 distributional records from available literature, museum collections, and our own field work and used bioclimatic and land cover characteristics to develop a model of potential distribution for M. watsonana. According to the model, the most important factors limiting the distribution of M. watsonana are: precipitation in wettest quarter exceeding 250–300 mm, precipitation in coldest quarter lower than 40 mm and exceeding 250 mm, altitudes above 2500 m and slopes steeper than 10.5°. The model suggests that most of the Iranian Plateau is suitable for the species except for some isolated areas such as the Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut deserts in Iran, Helmand basin in Afghanistan, the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan, the western Chagai-Kharan deserts of Pakistani Balochistan, and Thar and Cholistan deserts in eastern Pakistan. The most important factor in these regions appears to be the extremely low rainfall during coldest quarter of the year. The outer boundary of the distribution of M. watsonana follows important biogeographic barriers that are also clearly delimited by climatic conditions.

The Anatolian Peninsula is very richly biodiverse in terms of its location and with new studies, this wealth has gradually increased as new taxa of Anatolian origin are added to the literature.Ablepharus budakiandA. anatolicus,formerly considered to be subspecies ofA. kitaibelliandA. budakirespectively, are spread throughout the southern part of Anatolia. Although recent phylogenetic and morphological studies revealed their species status, no information was given about the relation of the species with each other in terms of ecological niche. In this study, our primary goal was to discover whether the niches of these two taxa were different from each other. Considering the analyses made within the scope of this study, it has been revealed that bothA. anatolicusandA. budakiare different from each other in terms of their ecological niche. However, since these two taxa have very small contact regions, an example of parapatric speciation, and their distribution areas cover almost completely different geographies, we can say that they have different ecological niche requirements, according to the results of this study. As a result, this study supported the findings in literature and the idea that these taxa are two different species

Genus Pseudotrapelus has a wide distribution in North Africa and in the Middle East. In the present study, we modeled the habitat suitability of two Omani species of the genus (Pseudotrapelus dhofarensis and Pseudotrapelus jensvindumi) to evaluate the potential effects of climate change on their distribution. Mean diurnal range and precipitation of wettest quarter are the most highly contributed variables for P. jensvindumi and P. dhofarensis, respectively. The potential distribution for P. dhofarensis in the current time covers the southern coastal regions of Oman, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, and Socotra Island, but the suitable regions were reduced in the future prediction and limited to Yemen, Socotra Island, and Oman. There have not been any records of the species outside of Oman. Analysis of habitat suitability for P. jensvindumi indicated that the species is restricted to the Al Hajar Mountain of Oman and the southeast coastal region of Iran, but there are no records of the species from Iran. Because mean diurnal range will not be influenced by climate change in future, the potential distribution of the species is not expected to be changed in 2050. All predicted models were performed with the highest AUC (more than 0.97) using the Maxent method. Investigation to find unknown populations of these two species in Iran, Yemen, and Socotra Island is essential for developing conservation programs in the future.