Phyllodactylus lanei Smith

Castiglia, Riccardo, Annesi, Flavia, Bezerra, Alexandra M. R., García, Andrés & Flores-Villela, Oscar, 2010, Cytotaxonomy and DNA taxonomy of lizards (Squamata, Sauria) from a tropical dry forest in the Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve on the coast of Jalisco, Mexico, Zootaxa 2508, pp. 1-29 : 11

Phyllodactylus lanei Smith (Lane's Leaf-toed Gecko)

Specimens analyzed: one male (CEAC3), one female (CEAC4).

Distribution: a Mexican endemic, with records from Nayarit, Guerrero, Jalisco, and Michoacán, and possibly Colima.

Subspecies: P. l. lanei : Guerrero; P. l. rupinus: Nayarit, coastal Jalisco, southern Michoacán; and two insular Subspecies: P. l. lupitae and P. l. isabelae ( Castro-Franco & Uribe-Pena 1992).

Karyotype: karyological data in P. l a n e i were restricted to a report that described karyotypes of specimens from the state of Guerrero, that probably belong to P. l. lanei , 2n = 33–34 and FN = 40–41 ( King 1981). The karyotype of specimens from Chamela region belonging to P. l. rupinus has been recently described ( Castiglia et al. 2009). It shows 2n = 38 and FN = 38, composed of 19 pairs of acrocentric chromosomes. Thus the karyptypes belonging to the two subspecies differ by the presence of two pairs of large metacentric chromosomes in P. l. l a n e i that are absent in P. l. rupinus. The slight difference in the fundamental number found in the two samples is probably due to a different interpretation of the very small short arms (see Castiglia et al. 2009 for details). Moreover, in the karyotype from Guerrero, a pair of heteromorphic chromosomes was also observed. In females, one of the homologues of this pair was described as bi-armed (with tiny short arms) and this was considered, by the author, a possible ZW sex chromosome system. However, in the studied individuals from Chamela, no chromosome pairs showed a visible heteromorphic condition ( Castiglia et al. 2009).

DNA taxonomy: a single sequence (rDNA 16S) of P. l a n e i from Guerrero is available in GeneBank ( Blair et al. 2009). This sequence possibly belongs to P. l. lanei . The genetic divergence between the haplotypes from Chamela and those from Guerrero is relatively high, (8.4–8.7%; 449 bp). This divergence is similar to that found among three insular subspecies belong to P. wirshingi , which are considered full species by Weiss and Hedges (2007). Because of the high chromosomal and genetic differences found between the specimens from Guerrero and Jalisco, is plausible the elevation of P. l. rupinus to a specific rank. However, molecular analysis from the type locality of P. l. rupinus (Lombardia, Michoacan, Mexico) are needed before any definitive taxonomic change can be made.