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The final part of a series of papers on the lizards of the Caucasus, that have been published in previous years. The paper reports on the life habits, capture and keeping in terraria of several lizards of Soviet Transcaucasia. In these respects the agamid Phrynocephalus helioscopus persi- cus and three species of the lacertid genus Eremias occuring in that area (i. e. strauchi, velox, pleskei) are discussed. Finally a !ist of all lizard species and subspecies actually known to occur in this region is given.

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New data on the reproductive biology of the Artvin lizard from an isolated northeastern population in the Northwest Caucasus are presented. These lizards reach sexual maturity after their second wintering. Pregnant females have their body length from 53.4 to 63.7 mm and the mass of 3.8 - 5.9 g. Oviposition occurs from the first decade of June till the third decade of August. Clutches contain from 2 to 8 eggs with sizes of 9.3 - 14.8×5.7 - 7.1 mm and weights 0.23 - 0.28 g. On oviposition a female loses from 14.3 to 37.5% of her weight. The fertility of females depends on their length (r = 0.58) and weight (r = 0.60). The incubation duration at a temperature within 28 - 30°C is 41 - 48 days. The mass of eggs from their oviposition to hatching of young lizards increases by 2.7 - 4.0 times, the length does by 1.2 - 1.3 times, and the width does by 1.6 times. Young lizards with a body length of 22.4 - 26.4 mm and weight 0.29 - 0.45 g are hatched from the second decade of July till the first decade of October.

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The taxonomic categories such as population and subspecies were studied on the example of three Caucasian lizard species of genus Darevskia - D. praticola, D. derjugini, and D. rudis by comparing the morphological data and results inferred from nuclear DNA markers. RAPD and new inter-MIR-PCR (IM-PCR) methods were used. The IM-PCR was used to characterize the lacertid DNA fragments located between dispersed SINE type repeats which occurred to be ortologous to mammalian repeats of the same type. It was shown that separation of the Northern population of D. derjugini (subspecies silvatica) is supported by the comparison with two Southern populations (derjugini and barani). The latter ones, in their turn, are very similar and hardly can be considered as good subspecies by the genetic distance. The subspecific division of D. praticola (praticola and pontica) also requires more specification. For example, several populations from North Caucasus (ssp. praticola) occurred to be heterogeneous. The level of differences between ssp. praticola and pontica is of the same order as in some of the praticola populations. Low level of molecular differences between two subspecies of D. rudis (obscura and bischoffi) does not confirm their validity as a full subspecies.

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Elements of the herpetofauna are in the author`s opinion of great importance for the zoogeographical division of the Palaearctic region. It is suggested that this region be divided into the following four subregions: 1/ arctic, 2/ boreal Euro-Siberian, 3/ bo- real Himalayan-Manchurian and 4/ Mediterranean-Central-Asiatic.