The Leiosaurae ?matuastos? lizard clade endemic to southern South America: phylogeography, species limits, biogeographic history and new candidate species

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

Austin, Texas

Congreso; Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists 2017; 2017

The clade Leiosaurae comprises scarcely known species endemic to the southern region of South America. The difficulty to find them in the field and their highly conserved morphology has limited our taxonomic knowledge and understanding of their evolutionary histories. Here, we used data collected over 9 years to study the genetic diversity and biogeographic history of the southernmost species of Leiosaurae (Liosaurus bellii, Diplolaemus darwinii, D. bibronii, D. sexcinctus and D. leopardinus). We used a fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene to analyze general phylogeographic patterns and added another mitochondrial gene and eight nuclear genes to perform species delimitation and phylogenetic analyses associated with divergence times. We found three clades within L. bellii and five clades within Diplolaemus species, highly geographically structured. We used the calibrated phylogeny to estimate ranges of ancestral distributions and generated new hypotheses about their historical biogeography.