Aspidoscelis lineattissima (Cope)

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 : 24

Aspidoscelis lineattissima (Cope) (Many-lined whiptail)

Distribution: Mexican endemic. Widespread along the Pacific coast, from Nayarit to Michoacán.

Subspecies: Aspidoscelis l. duodecemlineatus (Lewis), A. l. exoristus (Duellman & Wellman), A. l. lineattissima (Cope) , A. l. lividis (Duellman & Wellman).

Karyotype: The karyotype of this species has been studied by Lowe et al. (1970), who reported a 2n = 52 to be typical of the “ deppei ” group. It was not studied again in this study.

DNA taxonomy: The phylogenetic position of this species has not been studied with molecular markers. The phylogenetic tree confirms the placement of A. lineattissima within the “ deppei ” group ( Reeder et al. 2002) ( Fig. 14 ). In fact, A. lineattissima results as sister species of A. deppei (bootstrap values 63–91%) within a clade that also includes A. guttatus (66% with NJ and 63% with ML). This is the first report of a relationship between A. lineattissima and A. deppei .

Figures

FIGURE 14. Neighbour-Joining tree of 16 S rDNA haplotypes (462 bp) of Aspidoscelis species. Bootstrap values (%) obtained by the NJ, ML and MP are shown. The substitution model selected for ML was the GTR model with rate variation among sites (+ G), a proportion of invariable sites I = 0.4604 and a gamma distribution shape parameter of 0.4453. Asterisks indicate taxon with paraphyletic haplotypes.