Dasia

Vasudevan, Karthikeyan, Silva, Anslem De, Kar, Niladri Bhusan, Naniwadekar, Rohit, Lalremruata, Albert, Prasoona, Rebekah & Aggarwal, Ramesh K, 2012, Phylogeography of Dasia Gray, 1830 (Reptilia: Scincidae), with the description of a new species from southern India, Zootaxa 3233, pp. 37-51 : 46-47

Phylogeny of Dasia

The heuristic search of the MP analysis produced one most parsimonious tree with a tree length of 956 (CI = 0.46, HI = 0.53 and RI = 0.50). The GTR+G+I model was selected for the data Using MODELTEST ( Posada & Crandall 1998). The ML analysis for combined data revealed a single tree with a negative log-likelihood score (–ln L) of - 5411.14. The branching pattern of the ML, MP and the Bayesian trees were identical (fig. 7). Bayesian analyses provided higher values for posterior probabilities as support for the node, when compared with bootstrap supports from ML and MP analyses.

All the analyses supported monophyly of the genus Dasia . The South India and Sri Lanka clade was monophyletic, but the Southeast Asian Dasia were polyphyletic. The new species identified through this study ( D. johnsinghi sp. nov.) was distinct from D. haliana and D. subcaeruleum . The support for the node distinguishing the two species were significant (≥ 95%) in all the analyses (ML, MP and Bayesian). The closest relative of D. johnsinghi was D. haliana from Sri Lanka. In the Bayesian analysis, D. grisea was basal to all the other Dasia species. The African ( Trachylepis ) and the Asian ( Dasia , Eutropis ) clades were different and were deeply divided. Within the genus Dasia , interspecific distance varied from 0.03–0.09. In the case of D. olivacea from Peninsular Malaysia and Great Nicobar Island, the intraspecific distance was 0.03, which overlapped with known interspecific distances.