Communities of Romans and Italians abroad

Метою статті є дослідження особливостей процесу боротьби за скликання Помісного собору Автокефальної Православної Церкви в Польщі (АПЦП) у другій половині 20-х – 30-х роках ХХ століття, метою якого було врегулювання її правового статусу і майнового положення. Авторкою проаналізовано архівні документи, матеріали тогочасної періодичної преси та видань, в яких висвітлювалися проблеми щодо скликання Помісного собору АПЦП. Методологія дослідження. Методологічну основу статті склали принципи історизму, об’єктивності, системності, міждисциплінарного підходу. Застосовано загальнонаукові, спеціально-історичні та міждисциплінарні методи. Кожен із них у конкретній ситуації був результативним і дозволив об’єктивно реконструювати процеси щодо скликання Помісного собору Автокефальної Православної Церкви у Польщі. Наукова новизна роботи полягає у тому, що авторка на основі архівних документів та матеріалів періодичної преси досліджуваного періоду з’ясувала особливості процесу боротьби за скликання Помісного собору АПЦП. Дослідження ґрунтується на новому джерельному матеріалі, який вперше вводиться до наукового вжитку. На відміну від попередніх робіт, присвячених цій темі, у статті більш рельєфно виявлена динаміка змін у релігійній політиці як Польської держави, так і Римо-католицького костелу щодо Православної церкви. Висновки. Після проголошення автокефалії Православна церква у Польщі потребувала врегулювання свого правового статусу та внутрішньої реорганізації. Вирішення цих питань було дуже важливим для забезпечення церковно-релігійних потреб православної громади. Перед православ’ям стояла ціла низка проблем. Їх вирішення залежало від польського уряду, православної ієрархії і вірян. Переплетення інтересів цих трьох основних чинників спрямовувало процес організаційного та правового становлення АПЦП. Наприкінці 20-х і 30-х роках ХХ ст. на захист інтересів АПЦП активно стали українські посли і сенатори. Вони домагалися задоволення потреб українського православного населення з трибун сейму і сенату, перед церковною та світською владою. Створене у 1931 році Волинське українське об’єднання (ВУО) та Товариство імені митрополита Петра Могили домагалися скликання Помісного собору АПЦП, який мав врегулювати її правовий статус і майнове становище. Однак на шляху скликання Собору зустрічалися перепони з боку православної ієрархії та польського уряду. Він так і не відбувся. Але постійні передсоборні приготування стали імпульсом до активізації православних вірян, які відстоювали права своєї Церкви.

Book Review| September 01 2021 Review: Architecture of the Islamic West: North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, 700–1800 Jonathan M. Bloom Architecture of the Islamic West: North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, 700–1800 New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2020, 320 pp., 281 illus. $65 (cloth), ISBN 9780300218701 Abigail Krasner Balbale Abigail Krasner Balbale New York University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2021) 80 (3): 347–349. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2021.80.3.347 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Abigail Krasner Balbale; Review: Architecture of the Islamic West: North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, 700–1800. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 September 2021; 80 (3): 347–349. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2021.80.3.347 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search Jonathan M. Bloom's gorgeous new survey of the architecture of the Islamic west, much like his earlier work The Art and Architecture of Islam 1250–1800 (coauthored with Sheila S. Blair), is opulently illustrated with color images and useful plans.1 Like that earlier work, this book aims to appeal to the widest possible audience and will likely find enthusiastic adoption in college courses. The book covers the “Islamic west,” which Bloom defines as including not only Northwest Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, as indicated by the subtitle, but also Sicily. The temporal frame is unusually expansive, ranging from the arrival of Islam in North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula around the year 700 and continuing to 1800, long past the common stopping points of the conquest of Granada in 1492 and the establishment of Ottoman rule in central North Africa. Bloom also includes an innovative epilogue that discusses “the legacies... You do not currently have access to this content.

Aim The aims of this paper are to examine diversity–variability patterns for species of Aphodiinae (Coleoptera, Scarabaeoidea, Aphodiidae) on the Iberian Peninsula, and to determine the factors that influence their geographic distribution.Location Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal).Methods Data from 30 studies and their bibliographies on species of Iberian Peninsula Aphodiinae were compiled. The reliability of the inventories was evaluated using parametric species richness estimators. In addition, a further 11 variables related to rarity, geographic distribution, or phylogenetic diversity were considered. Diversity variables were analysed using principal components analysis to reduce the number of dependent variables. Subsequently, the effect of differences in locality size among the 30 studies was eliminated by calculating and retaining the residuals of the curvilinear relationship of each diversity variable with the area. Generalized linear models were used to examine the relationships between diversity and 17 environmental variables. The diversity variables and their residuals were also subject to trend surface analysis in order to identify the relevance of spatially structured variables that had not been considered. The contribution of explanatory variables was determined through hierarchical variance analysis.Results Principal components analysis of biodiversity variables revealed that most of the variability could be explained using three biodiversity indexes: BI1, correlated positively with species richness, widely distributed species, frequent species, abundant species, species occurring in North Africa, Europe and the Iberian Peninsula, and phylogenetic diversity; BI2, correlated positively with numbers of infrequent and African–Iberian species; and, BI3, correlated positively with numbers of endemic, non‐abundant, European, and Iberian‐restricted species. A latitudinal disjunction emerged in BI1, with maximum scores at the north‐western and southern corners, while maximum BI2 scores were found throughout the south, and maximum BI3 scores in the north‐west. For BI1, it was climate that had the greatest influence, followed by lithology, and livestock presence. Geographic variables were the most significant for BI2, followed by climate and livestock presence. Finally, for BI3, climate variables were the most important, while geography, lithology and livestock presence had some relevance.Main conclusions The relevance of geographic variables indicates that other unaccounted‐for factors that are spatially structured could possibly explain additional variation in Aphodiinae diversity. These factors may be historic in nature, relating to the species groups, namely the Ibero‐European and the Mediterranean or Afro‐Iberian. The northern pattern could reflect the fact that the Iberian Peninsula acted as a colonization route and as a refuge during the glacial/interglacial cycles, while the southern pattern could be a consequence of the connection between the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa during the Messinian crisis, and/or a historic relationship in common, related to human activity.

ABSTRACTThe precipitation regime over the Mediterranean basin is investigated for the period 1979–2010 using monthly mean satellite data from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCPv2). The results show that a clear contrast exists between the more rainy northern part of the study region (Southern Europe) and the drier southern area (North Africa, Iberian Peninsula) and between the western sides (rainsides) of the Iberian, Italian and Balkan peninsulas and their eastern sides (rainshadows). The mean annual precipitation averaged over the study area is P = 593 ± 203 mm year−1, but it has a strong spatial variability ranging from 20 mm year−1 (North Africa) to 1500 mm year−1 (Alps). A significant seasonal variability exists, with the early winter and late autumn months (November and December) being the wettest with precipitation amounts larger than 60 mm month−1. The GPCPv2 satellite precipitation data are satisfactorily correlated with rain gauge measurements from 433 stations within the study area (correlation coefficient R = 0.78 for all stations on a yearly basis, with values ranging between 0.72 and 0.82, depending on the season) with a slight overestimation. They also compare well with the higher spatial and temporal resolution Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) data, which supports the validity of the present study.

Most European rewilding initiatives are based on the recovery of large herbivores, particularly European bison Bison bonasus, aiming at restoring ecosystem processes and increase trophic complexity. The growing support for the release of bison as a wild species, and change its legal status, in Spain, as an ecological analogue of the extinct steppe bison Bison priscus, makes it an excellent example to reflect the limits of a rewilding biogeographically advisable. We discuss if this initiative could be justified from ecological, biogeographical, ethical, and legal reasons. Besides remarkable taxonomic and functional differences between both bison species, the Mediterranean environment, under the present and future climatic scenarios, does not suit the European bison. Furthermore, there is no evidence to support the presumption that the European bison was ever present in the Iberian Peninsula, with legal implications. We expect that our approach will be inspirational for similar assessments on rewilding initiatives globally.

Historically Buthus occitanus (Amoreux 1789) was recognized as the sole species of the genus present in the Iberian Peninsula, but recent morphological studies have identified and named two additional species. In addition, molecular data on the Moroccan fauna has shed light on the diversity within the genus. More species have since been described from North Africa, where diversity within the genus is highest. In this study we assessed the genetic diversity within specimens of Buthus Leach 1815 from across the Iberian Peninsula using cytochrome oxidase 1 (CO1) mitochondrial DNA sequences. The known range of B. ibericus Lourenco & Vachon 2004 was greatly expanded, with the species widespread in most of the western part of the Iberian Peninsula. Five distinct mtDNA lineages were found within Buthus from the Iberian Peninsula, two of which were reported for the first time in this study. However, both B. ibericus and B. occitanus included highly divergent lineages and thus further studies are needed to fully comprehend the taxonomy of Buthus from this region. Historically only one species of the scorpion genus Buthus Leach 1815, Buthus occitanus (Amoreux 1789) was recognized from the Iberian Peninsula (Fet & Lowe 2000). Recently two new endemic species were described, Buthus ibericus Lourenco & Vachon 2004 and Buthus montanus Lourenco & Vachon 2004, from the southern Spanish provinces of Cadiz, and Granada and Almeria, respectively. These authors also suggest that B. ibericus may be present in the Algarve, southern Portugal, but these specimens were not included in their morphological analyses due to the poor state of the museum specimens examined. All other European specimens, from France and Spain, were attributed to B. occitanus. Later Teruel & Perez-Bote (2005) examined a population of

The canonical Spanish plume is a synoptic pattern associated with deep moist convective storms over western continental Europe and the UK. A large-amplitude trough or cut-off low in the jet stream extending to low latitudes produces a long fetch of southerly or southwesterly deep tropospheric flow. The near-surface air passes across the heated elevated terrain of the Iberian Peninsula and travels into western Europe. Thus, the preconvective environment is characterized by an elevated mixed layer of hot dry air with steep lapse rates (i.e., the Spanish plume airstream) overtop a warm surface layer and capping inversion, resembling the loaded-gun convective sounding. A review of 102 journal articles mentioning the Spanish plume paints an unevidenced, inconsistent, unclear, and inaccurate picture. Some articles correctly employ the original definition of the Spanish plume airstream as the elevated mixed layer; others incorrectly apply the term to the surface (sometimes humid) airstream. Confusion extends to the origin of the airstream, which has been variously described as the Iberian Peninsula, northern Africa, or both, often unevidenced. Some air in so-called Spanish plumes does not even cross Spain. We examine a Spanish plume case from 1–2 July 2015. We calculate air-parcel trajectories to determine four airstreams responsible for the unstable thermodynamic profile over the UK: (1) a near-surface continental airstream transporting hot, moist boundary-layer air from France; (2) a lid (850-hPa) airstream descended from the mid-troposphere over the eastern North Atlantic and western Iberian Peninsula, initially warm and dry, but gradually cooling and moistening and rising while traveling northward, forming a layer of convective inhibition; (3) a subtropical airstream of hot, dry air with steep lapse rates traveling poleward from North Africa and the Mediterranean then ascending; and (4) a middle-latitude upper-level trough airstream traveling eastward from the North Atlantic Ocean then ascending. These results challenge the canonical Spanish plume synoptic pattern in three ways. First, most air reaching the UK does not travel over the Iberian Peninsula, particularly the near-surface air from France. Second, the steep lapse rates were pre-existing from the subtropics rather than created when passing over the Iberian Peninsula. Third, the lid results from subsidence rather than surface heating over the Iberian Peninsula. Thus, the synoptic-scale pattern appears to have a larger control over the thermodynamics of the Spanish plume airstream than heating from the Iberian Plateau, suggesting that the canonical conceptual model for the Spanish plume requires revision.

The plain tiger Danaus chrysippus is a widely distributed tropical and subtropical butterfly that has expanded its range into the northern Mediterranean in recent decades. This study focuses on its current situation in the Iberian Peninsula, where it was first detected in the early 1980s. Presence records, mainly collated from citizen science portals and Butterfly Monitoring Schemes (BMS), are used to describe the species’ phenology and distribution in the western Mediterranean region, and to assess several hypotheses regarding its summer dispersion. In North Africa and southern Iberia (below 37.5 °N), this species may be present all year, while in the northern Iberian Peninsula (above 37.5 °N) it only occurs seasonally. In both the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic and Canary Islands, the number of records peaks in autumn. During that season, the plain tiger follows an inland dispersal in the peninsula from the coastline using host plants that grow near rivers and other humid zones. The ecological overlap between the western Mediterranean sub-regions suggests that the ecological characteristics of the southern Iberian Peninsula are more akin to those of North Africa than the north of the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands. This leads to a partial separation of ecological niches between the northern region and the rest of the area, which helps explain differences in winter survival conditions. The observations of caterpillars and chrysalids during the winter of 2023-2024 in Catalonia provide the first evidence of winter survival at northern latitudes, a phenomenon potentially being driven by climate warming.

Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus in Ticks, Southwestern Europe, 2010

In this study, we integrate osteometric and palaeogenetic data to investigate dog variability in the Roman Empire in Iberia and North Africa. Osteometry was used to distinguish the status—domestic or wild, of approximately 2000 years old Canis remains and to understand to what extent teeth and long bones varied in dogs in the Roman provinces of Mauretania Tingitana, Lusitania and Tarraconensis. High-throughput 454-DNA sequencing technology was used to obtain mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from 15 bone and teeth samples. We identified five dog haplotypes from partial sequences of the hypervariable D-loop region. MtDNA haplotypes were grouped into two of the four major clades found in present-day dogs. We detected three clade A haplotypes in 12 samples from Portugal, Spain and Morocco, and a single clade D haplotype in 3 samples from Spain. So far, this is the oldest evidence for the presence of dog clade D in Iberia. It is dated to the late Roman occupation in the 4th-5th cent. AD (ca. 1,600 years ago).Our results confirm the existence of distinct dog morphotypes in Roman times that also harboured distinct genetic lineages. According to our data, dogs from distinct mtDNA lineages (clades A and D) have been continuously bred in the Iberian Peninsula since at least 1600 years ago. Moreover, the sharing of matrilines between dogs from Spain and North Africa may indicate gene flow. Dogs could have been easily transported between these regions by humans along maritime and terrestrial trade routes. These results provide new insights into pre-Roman and Roman domestication practices, confirming selection practices were extensively applied to dogs during the first centuries of our era in the Iberian Peninsula. We show that the greater size variability of teeth length (and consequently cranium) and long bone breadths (and consequently phenotype) of Roman dogs in the Iberian Peninsula, is concomitant with the detection of diverse and rare maternal lineages. This would reflect an intensification of dog breeding and the use of non-local dogs for breeding.

Aim This paper has three aims: (1) to reconstruct the colonization history of two peripheral populations of the trumpeter finch (Bucanetes githagineus) presumably originating from the same source, one the result of an ancient expansion process and the other recently established and still expanding; (2) to estimate the importance of key events, such as past and current gene flow and bottlenecks, in both expansion processes and their contribution to the present population structure and genetic diversity; and (3) to find out whether two peripheral populations that established at widely differing times also differ in terms of genetic diversity.Location Northwest Africa (assumed source population), Canary Islands (long‐established peripheral) and south‐eastern Iberian Peninsula (recently established peripheral).Methods Bayesian analysis of population structure, individual assignment tests, F‐statistics, maximum likelihood migration estimates, genetic diversity indices and bottleneck tests were calculated with microsatellite data from 194 trumpeter finches from five breeding and two seasonal non‐breeding sites.Results Our data support the existence of two subpopulations (Canary Island and Ibero‐African) as the most likely population structure. Seasonal sites in the Iberian Peninsula had the highest percentage of birds assigned to other, mainly Iberian, sites. Pairwise FST values showed that the Canary Island localities were very similar to each other, but differed from the rest. Gene flow estimates within subpopulations were only slightly higher in the Canary Island population than in the Ibero‐African one. Gene diversity indices were similar at all localities. Canary Island sites show evidence of bottlenecks, whereas the Ibero‐African sites do not.Main conclusions Our data show that, at present, birds from the Canary Islands are genetically differentiated from those in North Africa and continental Spain. We could not unequivocally confirm the African origin of Canary populations because the contrary is also plausible. The Iberian Peninsula seems to have repeatedly received individuals from North Africa, which would have led to the relatively high genetic diversity found in these recently established localities and prevented bottlenecks. Movements of individuals towards sites outside their current range during the non‐breeding season are likely to precede the establishment of new breeding sites at the periphery of the distribution range.

BackgroundThe Strait of Gibraltar separating the Iberian Peninsula from North Africa is thought to be a stronger barrier to gene flow for male than for female lineages. However, the recent subdivision of the haplogroup H at mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) level has revealed greater genetic differentiation among geographic regions than previously detected. The dissection of the mtDNA haplogroup H in North Africa, and its comparison with the Iberian Peninsula and Near-East profiles would help clarify the relative affinities among these regions.ResultsLike the Iberian Peninsula, the dominant mtDNA haplogroup H subgroups in North Africa are H1 (42%) and H3 (13%). The similarity between these regions is stronger in the North-West edge affecting mainly Moroccan Arabs, West Saharans and Mauritanians, and decreases eastwards probably due to gene flow from Near East as attested for the higher frequencies of H4, H5, H7, H8 and H11 subgroups. Moroccan Berbers show stronger affinities with Tunisian and Tunisian Berbers than with Moroccan Arabs. Coalescence ages for H1 (11 ± 2 ky) and H3 (11 ± 4 ky) in North Africa point to the possibility of a late Palaeolithic settlement for these lineages similar to those found for other mtDNA haplogroups. Total and partial mtDNA genomic sequencing unveiled stronger mtDNA differentiation among regions than previously found using HVSI mtDNA based analysis.ConclusionThe subdivision of the mtDNA haplogroup H in North Africa has confirmed that the genetic differentiation found among Western and Eastern populations is mainly due to geographical rather than cultural barriers. It also shows that the historical Arabian role on the region had more a cultural than a demic effect. Whole mtDNA sequencing of identical H haplotypes based on HVSI and RFLP information has unveiled additional mtDNA differences between North African and Iberian Peninsula lineages, pointing to an older mtDNA genetic flow between regions than previously thought. Based on this new information, it seems that the Strait of Gibraltar barrier affected both male and female gene flow in a similar fashion.

Reviewed by: Paleoetnología de la Hispania Céltica. Etnoarqueología, etnohistoria y folklore by Pedro R. Moya-Maleno David Wallace-Hare (bio) Pedro R. Moya-Maleno, Paleoetnología de la Hispania Céltica. Etnoarqueología, etnohistoria y folklore. (British Achaeological Reports S2996 (I–II)). Oxford: BAR Publishing, 2020. ISBN 9781407316703. 664 pages. £141 / €211.5 / US$282. With Paleoetnología de la Hispania Céltica. Etnoarqueología, etnohistoria y folklore, Pedro Moya-Maleno undertakes the ambitious project of surveying the economy, social organization, and religious views of pre-Roman societies of Hispania Celtica, essentially Celticspeaking areas of the pre-Roman Iberian Peninsula. The author uses both conventional routes for investigating this theme, viz., archaeology and literary sources, in addition to a novel ethnoarchaeological and ethnohistorical approach focusing on reading Celtic cultural features backwards and forwards using persistent local traditions. The inclusion and privileging of the latter data marks Moya-Maleno’s work as unique and pioneering. The book begins with what is arguably the most important section for Celticists, laying out the conceptual framework and providing a step-by-step guide to the author’s unique methodology (11–64). The introduction explains why folklore and laterdocumented local traditions have not been brought to bear for filling in large gaps in our understanding of ancient Hispano-Celtic populations in the Iberian Peninsula. Moya-Maleno outlines a history of the continual sidelining of the use of folklore and local traditions by various disciplines to understand ancient Celtic populations in Europe. He rejects a search for a single Celticity in Europe, but seeks rather sui generis Celtic cultural features in the Iberian Peninsula. He problematizes the concept of the Celt, and the introduction makes clear that he is fully aware of the on-going debates surrounding the application of the terms lo celto y la céltica ‘the Celt and the Celtic’ (30) either to evoke a pan-Celticity or as a catch-all term for the extensive cultural, linguistic, and [End Page 255] material correspondences we can see in temperate Europe during the first millennium bce and first few centuries ce. Productively, Moya-Maleno wants to recover active histories and unknown aspects of Celticity as expressed in areas of the Iberian Peninsula—the northern Peninsula especially—by including evidence derived from oral history, folklore, and local traditions. He helps readers see why this should be done by reviewing the history of the pre-Roman, Roman, and post-Roman Iberian Peninsula through the lens of the perdurance of traditions (38–51). Moya-Maleno takes great pains to show that Celtic strands of tradition are just one of many that those wishing to recover Celtic material via ethnographic data (for instance) must sort through carefully and cautiously. This awareness of the plurality of traditions in the Peninsula is refreshing to see in a work on Celtic Hispania and signals a healthy move in our field towards inclusion and interdisciplinarity. After the extensive introduction (comprising three chapters: an introduction, a chapter on methodology, and a review of types of sources), the book follows a fairly straightforward format which attempts to recover/uncover aspects of daily life in Hispania Celtica. These later sections comprise the bulk of the work and are well-segmented for ease of reference. Chapter 4 reviews the territory, economy, and subsistence modes of Celtic Hispania. Chapter 5 examines social organization in Celtic Hispania and rounds off Volume i. Volume ii is devoted to the religious worldview (cosmovisión) of Hispania Celtica. Readers will get the most out of the long-distance links Moya-Maleno is able to tease out regarding Celtic religion and social organization. Two sections that showcase the benefits of this book are the discussion of rites of passage (Chapter 5.3), where he examines animalization traditions—wherein villagers dress up as animals for ritual purposes—and their Celtic foundations, and the treatment of the complex topic of sacred trees (6.2.4b) in local and ancient Hispano-Celtic traditions. I mentioned that the work is ambitious in scope, attempting as it does to rescue important hermeneutic strands of Hispano-Celtic tradition in the oral literature and customs of pre-modern Spain and Portugal. Moya-Maleno has had to...

The narrow Strait of Gibraltar has separated the African and European continents since the Miocene (5.3 Mya), with a different degree of permeability for Mediterranean taxa. Southern and northern regions of the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco, respectively, are key areas to evaluate the colonization dynamics and biogeographic history of taxa occurring at both sides of this strait. The Ibero-Maghrebian subspecies of the European pond turtle, Emys orbicularis occidentalis , is patchily distributed and threatened throughout most of the Iberian Peninsula and northern Morocco and its origin is thought to be in North Africa. Here we expand the geographic sampling across the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco, with special emphasis in the southern tip of the peninsula and northern Morocco, and analyze mtDNA sequences of 183 E. o. occidentalis to better understand the complex biogeographic history of this subspecies. We provide for the first time evidence for shared haplotypes of Iberian and North African pond turtles, with an additional haplotype in the southern Iberian Peninsula derived from Moroccan haplotypes. This supports the hypothesis that the Strait of Gibraltar constitutes no significant biogeographic barrier for E. orbicularis . However, the newly discovered shared, or extremely similar, haplotypes of European pond turtles from the southern Iberian Peninsula and Morocco suggest either that at least two independent natural colonization waves from Morocco have reached the Iberian Peninsula or that Moroccan turtles were accidentally or deliberately introduced there.

The Mediterranean gecko Tarentola mauritanica is one of the most abundant reptile species in the western Mediterranean Basin. We use mitochondrial DNA sequences, 12sRNA and 16sRNA, to analyse the patterns of distribution in the Iberian Peninsula. The results show three well defined lineages. The first one, already known to be widespread throughout Europe, is distributed along the eastern coast and southern areas of the Iberian Peninsula. The second one, endemic to the Iberian Peninsula, is widely found in central regions; and the third lineage, found so far only in two southern localities is unrelated to the other Iberian lineages, but rather to a Northern Moroccan clade. The genetic variability found within the Iberian haplogroup and the existence of a single haplotype within the European lineage suggests a complex pattern of rapid radiations and anthropogenic introductions. The third clade seems to be the result of a natural colonization from North Africa. All the data indicate that T. mauritanica is a species complex. The Iberian Peninsula, due to its geological complex history, appears to be both a hotspot and a melting pot of biodiversity, with several studies of diverse herpetofauna indicating that cryptic species occur there. More studies of additional species will be needed to develop a comparative phylogeographic framework for the region.