Vilcunia Donoso-Barros & Cei, 1971

Pincheira-Donoso, Daniel, Scolaro, J. Alejandro & Sura, Piotr, 2008, A monographic catalogue on the systematics and phylogeny of the South American iguanian lizard family Liolaemidae (Squamata, Iguania), Zootaxa 1800, pp. 1-85 : 37

Subgenus Vilcunia Donoso-Barros & Cei

Vilcunia Donoso-Barros & Cei 1971: 90 (type species: Vilcunia silvanae Donoso-Barros & Cei 1971 ).

As most of major-level clades within the Liolaemus genus, the clade Vilcunia shows a controversial history. While some authors have recognized this group of Patagonian lizards as a valid subgenus ( Cei 1986; Pincheira-Donoso & Núñez 2005), others have suggested that it does not exhibit clear signals of differentiation from Liolaemus ( Etheridge 1995; Etheridge & Espinoza 2000). The development of phylogenetic hypotheses has recently provided support to the idea that these lizards form a monophyletic clade closely related to the Donosolaemus subgenus and the magellanicus line (e.g. Espinoza et al. 2004; also Fig. 4 ).

Figures

FIGURE 4. Phylogenetic relationships between the Liolaemus species of the series signifer (subgenera Donosolaemus, Vilcunia and Eulaemus, and line magellanicus). The main structure of the tree is based on Schulte et al.’s (2000, 2004) and Espinoza et al.’s (2004) phylogenetic hypotheses. Additional details on phylogenetic relationships between species within each clade have been taken from specific phylogenetic studies (e.g. Avila et al. 2007; Pincheira-Donoso et al. 2007a).