Molecular phylogeny of the Liolaemus kriegi complex (Iguania, Liolaemini)

MEDINA, C.D.; AVILA, L.J.; SITES, J.W., JR.; MORANDO, M.

HERPETOLOGICA

HERPETOLOGISTS LEAGUE

Lugar: Lawrence; Año: 2015 vol. 71 p. 143 - 150

0018-0831

In this study we provide a well-supported phylogenetic hypothesis for all recognized lineages of the Liolaemus kriegi complex based on a multi-locus dataset. We used 29 individuals from the eight taxa included in this complex for which we sequenced eight gene regions (two mitochondrial and six nuclear).We implemented Maximum Parsimony (MP), Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Bayesian Inference (BI) methods for the mitochondrial, nuclear and concatenated sequences, and employed *BEAST to estimate the species tree. The all genes concatenated analyses and the species trees recovered the L. kriegi complex as monophyletic with modest to high support, including three described species (L. kriegi, L. ceii, and L. buergeri), and three previously identified candidate species (L. sp. A, L. sp. C, and L. sp. D) with L. tregenzai as a closely related taxon. Another previously proposed candidate species (L. sp. B) has a labile topological position that varies depending on the type of markers and analytical methods used. In the nuclear gene tree L. sp. B is recovered outside of the L. kriegi complex (nested on the L. petrophilus group), in the mitochondrial and species tree it is included within it. Morphologically L. sp. B is indistinguishable from L. autromendocinus (L. petrophilus group), thus we do not consider this taxa as part of the L. kriegi complex. We estimated divergence times for the major clades of the complex based on the gene and species trees, and all are inferred during the Pleistocene.