ИСТИНА

Phylogenetic position of Phrynocephaus rossikowi was never studied on the base of DNA sequences, only morphological-based hypothesis were offered (Whiteman, 1978 — on skeleton structures; Semenov, Dunayev, 1989 — on hemipenis morphology, etc.) or allozyme analysis (Likhnova, 1992). The molecular data of Ph. rossikowi is so scarse due to it`s rareness in the museum collections and difficulties in obtaining fresh material. Phrynocephalus rossikowi inhabits remote territories in Amu-Darya valley in Kara-Kalpak and neighbouring regions of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The only specimen of this species deposited in the ZMMU collection featured dried skin collected in 1990 (ZMMU R-12795). Molecular analysis took place in the special clean room (Laboratory of Historical DNA of ZMMU). Specific primer pairs were designed to amplify short fragments of 3 mtDNA genes (COI, cytb, ND4). We obtained 1309 b.p. in total (640 b.p. of COI, 167 b.p. of cytb, 502 b.p. of ND4). Concateneted sequences were added the alighnment of other species of the genus Phrynocephalus from our previous work (Solovyeva et al., 2014), and analized using bayesian interference. Ph. rossikowi belongs to the clade of turan species Ph. ocellatus + Ph. raddei with high support (BI = 0.99).