Estimating Ancestral Ranges: Testing Methods with a Clade of Neotropical Lizards (Iguania: Liolaemidae)

DÍAZ GÓMEZ, JUAN MANUEL

PLOS ONE

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE

Año: 2011 vol. 6 p. 1 - 12

1932-6203

Establishing the ancestral ranges of distribution of a monophyletic clade, called the ancestral area, is one of the centralobjectives of historical biogeography. In this study, I used three common methodologies to establish the ancestral area ofan important clade of Neotropical lizards, the family Liolaemidae. The methods used were: Fitch optimization, WeightedAncestral Area Analysis and Dispersal-Vicariance Analysis (DIVA). A main difference from previous studies is that the areasused in the analysis are defined based on actual distributions of the species of Liolaemidae, instead of areas definedarbitrarilyor based on other taxa. The ancestral area of Liolaemidae found by Fitch optimization is Prepuna on Argentina,Central Chile and Coastal Peru. Weighted Ancestral Area Analysis found Central Chile, Coquimbo, Payunia, Austral Patagoniaand Coastal Peru. Dispersal-Vicariance analysis found an ancestral area that includes almost all the areas occupied byLiolaemidae, except Atacama, Coquimbo and Austral Patagonia. The results can be resumed on two opposing hypothesis: arestricted ancestral area for the ancestor of Liolaemidae in Central Chile and Patagonia, or a widespread ancestor distributedalong the Andes. Some limitations of the methods were identified, for example the excessive importance of plesiomorphicareas in the cladograms.