Verification of species assignment of the legless lizard of the genus Anguis living in the territory of Belarus

The article presents an overview of the data on the distribution of the slowworm in Belarus and the results of molecular genetic species identification according to the mtDNA COI region of 19 representatives of the genus Anguis collected in 13 administrative districts of 5 regions of Belarus (except the Mogilev region) in the period 2018‒2023. It has been established that only one species of legless lizards lives in the territory of Belarus – the Eastern Slowworm (Anguis colchica Nordmann, 1840). It was revealed that the Belarusian population of the species is characterized by low values of nucleotide (π = 0.00090) and haplotypic (Hd ± SD = 0.351 ± 0.111) diversity and is represented by two previously unknown haplotypes that are separated from haplotypes of other species by a genetic distance from 0.05740‒0.05995 (A. graeca) to 0.09439‒0.09694 (other species genus Anguis).