A well-supported species tree of the Eulaemus clade (Squamata: Liolaemus): Evidence of an ancient radiation

OLAVE, M.; AVILA, L.J.; SITES, J.W., JR.; MORANDO, M.

Vancouver

Congreso; VII World Congress of Herpetology; 2012

World Congress of Herpetology

The lizard genus Liolaemus is endemic to an extensive area of temperate South America and includes 235 recognized species. Since Laurent?s (1983) morphological study, the genus has been divided into two subgenera: Liolaemus (or the chiliensis group) and Eulaemus (or the Argentinean group), distributed mainly to the west (Chile) and east (Argentina) of the Andes, respectively. Morphological and mitochondrial characters have been used to propose phylogenetic hypotheses for different clades within this genus, and most of these are based on incomplete taxon sampling and limited intraspecific sampling. In this work we present the first well-supported molecular phylogenetic hypothesis for the clade Eulaemus , based on 12 nuclear molecular markers (protein coding loci & anonymous loci) as well as two mitochondrial markers (cytb-12S; ~ 10,500 bp total). This clade includes 77 described species, and we included multiple representatives from all larger groups within it, including new candidate species. We analyzed the dataset using different species tree approaches (*BEAST, BEST, STEM and MDC) and compare these results with traditional concatenated analyses. We also present fossil-calibrated divergence estimates (using BEAST), and discuss a possible ancient radiation for most of the larger Eulaemus clades.