Morphology, niche modeling and phylogeography of four species of lizards of the Liolaemus lineomaculatus section species (Liolaemini) from southern Patagonia

BREITMAN, M.F.; BONINO, M.; SITES, J.W., JR.; AVILA, L.J.; MORANDO, M.

HERPETOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS

HERPETOLOGISTS LEAGUE

Lugar: Lawrence; Año: 2015 vol. 29

0733-1347

Patagonia is a biodiverse area of high conservation priority, and Liolaemus lizards comprise a large component of the endemic < fauna. Recent molecular and morphological studies have revealed cryptic species in several Liolaemus groups, including the Liolaemus = lineomaculatus section (22 species recognized to date), which is endemic to Patagonia. Despite being a conspicuous component of this area, little is known about the morphological, ecological, and genetic variation of lizards of the L. lineomaculatus section; moreover species limits and pastdemographic scenarios are still uncertain for many of these species. In this paper, we characterize the morphological, ecological (niche envelope),and genetic variability of the four southernmost species of the L. kingii group (L. lineomaculatus section). Our main goal is to clarify speciesboundaries (using integrative taxonomy) as well as to infer evolutionary and demographic histories. For this paper we used a total of 241specimens, 195 of which were used for morphological analyses (10 morphometric, 10 meristic, and 7 qualitative characters) and 226 weresequenced for cytochrome b. We summarized ecological variation by using environmental data from 62 localities of occurrence in a geospatialmodeling analysis to estimate current and past species niche envelopes and to test for niche similarity. We identified genetic lineages andevaluated differentiation among them at molecular, morphological, and niche envelope levels. Overall, we found support for the specific status ofL. baguali, L. escarchadosi, and L. sarmientoi based on differentiation along each of these three levels. Liolaemus tari is also differentiated fromthe other species, even though we could not evaluate its niche envelope due to small sample size. We also show the first evidence of possiblehybridization among some of these species and recognize a new candidate species.