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We review recent taxonomic and ecological research on butterfly lizards (genus Leiolepis Cuvier, 1829) carried out at the Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum A. Koenig (ZFMK) in Bonn. The remarkable parthenogenetic forms («species») of Leiolepis are either diploid (L. boehmei) or triploid (L. guentherpetersi, L. triploida). In the case of L. guentherpetersi, a hybrid status has been proven, L. guttata providing the maternal line and L. reevesii being the paternal one. L. triploida is best explained as a hybrid of diploid parthenogenetic boehmei females and L. belliana males, the origin of the L. boehmei strain itself remaining unknown. The taxon rubritaeniata, originally described as a subspecies of L. belliana, was later, after the raise of L. b. reevesi to full specific rank, referred to as L. reevesii rubritaeniata. Partly, a subspecific status was not even conceded. However, new morphological and molecular genetic data clearly demonstrate specific status also for L. rubritaeniata, an inland inhabiting butterfly lizard known from Thailand, Laos and a small part of Central Vietnam. During field surveys in the Phnom Kulen National Park in Cambodia, L. rubritaeniata was recorded for the first time also from this country. Ecological data stem from an unpublished field study of a L. belliana population on Langkawi Id., West Malaysia. Apart from an unusual kind of locomotion during display, data were collected on spatial distribution, density, stomach contents, and social behaviour.

The taxonomic relationships within the genus Uromastyx Merrem, 1820 were assessed using morphological and genetic methods, resulting in the resurrection of the genus Saara Gray, 1845 for Saara hardwickii, S. asmussi and S. loricata. A synopsis of all taxa considered to be valid within Uromastyx and Saara is provided.

Brief historical sketch of Museum A. Koenig (ZFMK), Bonn. Founded by the St. Petersburg native Alexander Koenig (1858 1940) in 1900 as a purely ornithological research institution, it became a public museum in 1934 while the research part was extended to mammalogy and entomology. The herpetology department was founded only in 1951. It first housed merely few herps collected by Koenig and his assistants as by-catches during their mainly ornithological expeditions to North Africa. Remarkable is the Hoggar spiny tail lizard collected by Frhr. Hans Geyr von Schweppenburg and subsequently described by Lorenz Müller as Uromastyx geyri Müller, 1922, thereby becoming the first namebearing herpetological type of ZFMK. Important acquisitions of agamids followed only 4 5 decades later: rich Laudakia stellio material from several Aegean islands (K.F. Buchholz); several rare and endemic Laudakia species from Afghanistan (Clas M. Naumann) and Pakistan (Khalid J. Baig); the Gottingen Museum collection with some historical agamid types; significant collections from West (Mauritania, Senegal) and East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia) as well as from SE Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam). Research on agamid lizards at ZFMK was and is carried out in the course of several doctoral theses since the late 1970-ies: with the two DAAD fellows Scott M. Moody (from Ann Arbor, USA), Khalid J. Baig (from Islamabad), Thomas Wilms and Philipp Wagner, the work of the two latter being strongly supported by Andreas Schmitz (formerly also ZFMK, now Geneva). Agamid research in Bonn culminated by organizing the 1st international symposium «DeAgamis» which now finds its continuation in the present meeting «DeAgamis II» in St. Petersburg.