Amphibia-Reptilia 38 (2017): 289-305 A new population and subspecies of the critically endangered Anatolian meadow viper Vipera anatolica Eiselt and Baran, 1970 in eastern Antalya province Bayram Göçmen 1 , Konrad Mebert 2,∗ , Mert Karı¸ s 1 , Mehmet Anıl O ˘ guz 1 , Sylvain Ursenbacher 2 Abstract. We report on a new population of Vipera anatolica from the Geyik Mountain Range in eastern Antalya Province, Turkey. It represents only the second known location, and is situated in a valley about 200 km east from the terra typica at Kohu Da˘ g in western Antalya Province. We compare both populations and, based on marked differences in morphology, habitat, genetics, and its geographically isolated location, we describe the recently discovered population as a new subspecies. Aspects of ecology, threats, and conservation needs are discussed. Keywords: conservation, distribution, food, genetics, habitat, morphology, Turkey, Vipera anatolica. Introduction Rarity, difficulty of access to remote areas, and/or insufficient information on morpholo- gical variation have limited the understand- ing of the distribution, biology and taxon- omy of a number of palaearctic viper species. For example, in Turkey, several species of vipers are regarded as rare and threatened (see IUCN Red List of Threatened Taxa at www.iucnredlist.org), and only recent field re- searches have revealed their more extensive dis- tributions (e.g., Göçmen et al., 2014a, 2015a, 2015b; Mebert et al., 2015, 2016). But in parti- cular one Turkish viper, the Anatolian meadow or mountain steppe viper (Vipera anatolica Eiselt and Baran, 1970), a small, mainly in- sectivorous species from high altitude stony or rocky grasslands (alpine to sub-alpine mead- ows) was the subject to a very small number of publications with limited content. Originally, this viper was described by Eiselt and Baran (1970) as a subspecies, Vipera ursinii anatolica, 1 - Zoology Section, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Ege University, Bornova, ˙ Izmir, Turkey 2 - Section of Conservation Biology, Department of Envi- ronmental Sciences, University of Basel, Basel, Switzer- land ∗ Corresponding author; e-mail: konradmebert@gmail.com of the widely known European meadow viper, V. ursinii (Saint Girons, 1980). The descrip- tion was based on two specimens collected in 1969 by A. Budak and F. Spitzenberger from the Kohu Da˘ g (Da˘ g=Mountain), part of the western Taurus Mountain Range, in Antalya Province of southwestern Turkey. The terra typica lies within the protected area of the Cedar Forest Reserve, Çı˘ glıkara Ormanları, in southwestern Elmali District. Since then, only three more specimens became officially registered, all from the same locality: (1) a juvenile male collected 1984 by H. Sigg (Billing, 1985; Sigg, 1987), (2) a specimen collected in the 19th century by one of the Boie brothers (Saint Girons, 1978; Nilson and Andren, 2001), its mark placed on the Bey Da˘ glari (massif) just east of Kohu Da˘ g (see map in Saint Girons, 1980), but with- out any additional information for that local- ity, and (3) a specimen kept in captivity in the 1990s (refs. in Nilson and Andren, 2001). The few known specimens, the extremely restricted range of less than 10 km 2 , as well as threats from killing by local farmers and illegal pet trade, resulted in listing V. anatolica as critically endangered in the IUCN Red List files (Tok et al., 2009). However, information on the threat status has partly been adjusted by Zinenko et al. (2016a), who described the finding of additional © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2017. DOI:10.1163/15685381-00003111