Abstract
Australia’s agamid genus Diporiphora is speciose and widespread, however, there remain significant taxonomicuncertainties within this group. Field collections across the range of Diporiphora continue to uncover undocumentedmorphological and ecological variation. A new morpho-type was collected from hard pebbly soils on Valetta Station,western Queensland, providing ample data for the description of a new species (Diporiphora ameliae sp. nov.). Weundertook a morphological study, integrated with a comprehensive genetic study to provide the phylogenetic placementand distinctiveness of the new species. Although superficially similar to Diporiphora winneckei, the new species ischaracterised by well developed ventral body patterns consisting of four longitudinal grey stripes on a cream backgroundand three distinctive dark V-shaped markings that converge anteriorly on the throat and gular area. Molecular data ispresented incorporating a ~1200 bp of the mtDNA protein-coding gene ND2 and five flanking tRNAs for 58 newsequences and 53 previously published sequences. Phylogenetic analyses of the molecular data strongly support the newspecies as an independent evolutionary lineage within Diporiphora. In addition, the molecular data also showed that thereis far greater diversity in Diporiphora winneckei sensu lato than was anticipated. Our results clearly indicate that there are at least three independent evolutionary lineages of D. winneckei-like dragons.References
Boulenger, G.A. (1885) Catalogue of the lizards in the British Museum (Natural History).Vol. 1, Second edition. British Museum, London, 436 pp.
Coventry, A.J. (1970) Reptile and amphibian type specimens housed in the National Museum of Victoria. Memoirs of the National Museum of Victoria, 31, 115–124.
Doughty, P., Kealley, L., & Melville, J. (2012) Taxonomic assessment of Diporiphora (Reptilia: Agamidae) dragon lizards from the western arid zone of Australia. Zootaxa, in review.
Glauert, L. (1959) A new agamid from Queen Victoria Springs, Western Australia. Diporiphora reginae sp. nov. Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, 1957–58, 10.
Gray, J.E. (1842) Descriptions of some hitherto unrecorded species of Australian reptiles and batrachians. In Gray, J.E. (Ed.) Zoological Miscellany. Treuttel, Würtz & Co., London, pp. 51–57.
Gray, J.E (1845) Catalogue of the Specimens of Lizards in the Collection of the British Museum. British Museum, London, 289 pp.
Greer, A. E. (1989) The biology and evolution of Australian lizards. Surrey Beatty & Sons Pty Ltd, Chipping Norton, NSW.
Houston, T.F. (1977) A new species of Diporiphora from South Australia and geographic variation in D. winneckei Lucas & Frost (Lacertilia: Agamidae). Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 101(8), 199–205.
Hugall, A. F., Foster, R., Hutchinson, M., & Lee, M. S. Y. (2008) Phylogeny of Australasian agamid lizards based on nuclear and mitochondrial genes: Implications for morphological evolution and biogeography. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 93, 343–358.
Lucas, A.H.S. & Frost, C. (1896) Reptilia Pp. 112–175 in: Spencer, [W.] B. (ed.) Report on the work of the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia. Part II.—Zoology. Dulau & co., London & Melville, Mullen & Slade, Melbourne.
Macey, J.R., Larson, A., Ananjeva, N.B. & Pupenfuss, T.J. (1997) Replication slippage may cause parallel evolution in the secondary structures of mitochondrial transfer RNAs. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 14, 30–39.
Macey, J.R., Schulte II, J.A., Larson, A., Ananjeva, N.B., Wang, Y., Pethiyagoda, R., Rastegar-Pouyani, N. & Papenfuss, T.J. (2000) Evaluating trans-Tethys migration: an example using acrodont lizard phylogenetics. Systematic Biology, 49, 233–256.
Macleay, W. (1877) The lizards of the Chevert Expedition. Second paper. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of N.S.W. 2, 97–104.
Melville J., Ritchie E., Chapple S.N.J., Glor R.E. & Schulte, J.A. II (2011). Evolutionary origins and diversification of dragon lizards in Australia’s tropical savannah woodlands. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 58, 257–270.
Nylander, J. A. A. (2004) MrModeltest v2. Program distributed by the author. Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University.
Ronquist, F. & Huelsenbeck, J.P. (2003) MrBayes3: Bayesian phylogenetic inference under mixed models. Bioinformatics, 19, 1572–1574.
Schulte II, J.A., J. Melville, J. &. Larson, A. (2003) Molecular phylogenetic evidence for ancient divergence of lizard taxa on either side of Wallace’s Line. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 270, 597–603.
Shoo, L. P., Rose, R., Doughty, P., Austin, J.J., & Melville, J. (2008) Diversification patterns of pebble-mimic dragons are consistent with historical disruption of important habitat corridors in arid Australia. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 48, 528–542.
Smith KL, Harmon LJ, Shoo LP & Melville J. (2011) Evidence that stabilizing election constrains phenotypic evolution in a cryptic species complex of agamid lizards. Evolution, 65, 976–992.
Steindachner, F (1867) Reptilien. In Reise der österreichischenFregatte Novara um die Erde in den Jahren 1857, 1858, 1859. State Printer, Vienna, 98 pp.
Storr, G.M. (1974) Agamid lizards of the genera Caimanops, Physignathus and Diporiphora in Western Australia and Northern Territory. Records of the Western Australian Museum, 3(2), 121–146.
Storr, G.M. (1979) Two new Diporiphora (Lacertilia :Agamidae) from Western Australia. Records of the Western Australian Museum, 7, 255–263.
Tavaré, S. (1986) Some probabilistic and statistical problems in the analysis of DNA sequences. Lectures on Mathematics in the Life Sciences 17, 57–86.
Wells, R.W. & Wellington, C.R. (1985) A classification of the Amphibia and Reptilia of Australia. Australian Journal of Herpetology Supplementary Series, 1, 1–61.