Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
Responsive image
Issue: Vol. 4374 No. 4: 22 Jan. 2018
Type: Article
Published: 2018-01-21
DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4374.4.5
Page range: 545–564
Abstract views: 716
PDF downloaded: 2

A new species of fan-throated lizard of the genus Sitana Cuvier, 1829 from coastal Kerala, southern India 

Travanvore Natural History Society, MBRRA 65, Jyothis, Mathrubumi Road, Vanchiyoor, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala 695035, India
Travanvore Natural History Society, MBRRA 65, Jyothis, Mathrubumi Road, Vanchiyoor, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala 695035, India
Zoological Survey of India, Western Ghat Regional Centre, Jaferkhan Colony, Eranhipalam P.O., Kozhikode, Kerala 673006, India
National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, Bangalore, Karnataka 560065, India
National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, Bangalore, Karnataka 560065, India
Reptilia taxonomy India molecular phylogeny mitochondrial DNA Kerala

Abstract

We here describe Sitana attenboroughii sp. nov., a new species of fan-throated lizard of the genus Sitana Cuvier, 1829 from coastal Kerala in southern India. The new species morphologically is closer to Sitana visiri Deepak, 2016 (in Deepak et al. 2016a), however, differs in having higher numbers of ventral scales and a comparatively short but richly colored dewlap. Genetically the new species shows affinity to Sitana marudhamneydhal Deepak, Khandekar, Varma & Chaitanya, 2016 from which it differs in an uncorrected pairwise sequence divergence of 2.2% for a fragment of mitochondrial Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide dehydrogenase (NADH) subunit 2 gene.

 

References

  1. Agarwal, I., Mirza, Z.A., Pal, S., Maddock, S.T., Mishra, A. & Bauer, A.M. (2016) A new species of the Cyrtodactylus (Geckoella) collegalensis (Beddome, 1870) complex (Squamata: Gekkonidae) from Western India. Zootaxa, 4170 (2), 339–354.
    https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4170.2.7

    Amarasinghe, A.A.T., Ineich, I., Karunarathna, D.M.S.S., Botejue, W.M.S. & Campbell, P.D. (2015) Two new species of the genus Sitana Cuvier, 1829 (Reptilia: Agamidae) from Sri Lanka, including a taxonomic revision of the Indian Sitana species. Zootaxa, 3915 (1), 67–98.
    https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3915.1.3

    Deepak, V., Giri, V.B., Asif, M., Dutta, S.K., Vyas, R., Zambre, A.M., Bhosale, H. & Karanth, P. (2016a) Systematics and phylogeny of Sitana ( Reptilia : Agamidae ) of Peninsular India , with the description of one new genus and five new species. Contributions to Zoology, 85, 67–111.

    Deepak, V., Khandekar, A., Varma, S. & Chaitanya, R. (2016)b) Description of a new species of Sitana Cuvier, 1829 from southern India. Zootaxa, 4139 (2), 167–182.
    https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4139.2.2

    Deepak, V., Vyas, R., Giri, V.B. & Praveen Karanth, K. (2015) A taxonomic mystery for more than 180 years: The identity and systematic position of Brachysaura minor (HARDWICKE & GRAY, 1827). Vertebrate Zoology, 65, 371–381.

    Grismer, J.L., Schulte, J.A., Alexander, A., Wagner, P., Travers, S.L., Buehler, M.D., Welton, L.J. & Brown, R.M. (2016) The Eurasian invasion: phylogenomic data reveal multiple Southeast Asian origins for Indian Dragon Lizards. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 16, 43.
    https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-016-0611-6

    Kamath, A. (2016) Variation in Display Behavior, Ornament Morphology, Sexual Size Dimorphism, and Habitat Structure in the Fan-Throated Lizard (Sitana, Agamidae). Journal of Herpetology, 50, 394–403.
    https://doi.org/10.1670/15-040

    Kearse, M., Moir, R. & Wilson, A. (2012) Geneious Basic: an integrated and extendable desktop software platform for the organization and analysis of sequence data. Bioinformatics, 28, 1647–1649.
    https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/bts199

    Lanfear, R., Calcott, B., Ho, S. & Guindon, S. (2012) PartitionFinder: combined selection of partitioning schemes and substitution models for phylogenetic analyses. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 29, 1695–1701.
    https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mss020

    Macey, J.R., Larson, A., Ananjeva, N., Fand, Z. & Papenfuss, T.J. (1997) Two novel gene orders and the role of light-strand replication in rearrangement of the vertebrate mitochondrial genome. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 14, 91–104.
    https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a025706

    Mirza, Z.A., Vyas, R., Patel, H., Maheta, J. & Sanap, R. V (2016) A New Miocene-Divergent Lineage of Old World Racer Snake from India. PloS one, 11 (3) , e0, 1–17.
    https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0148380

    Pyron, R., Burbrink, F. & Wiens, J. (2013) A phylogeny and revised classification of Squamata, including 4161 species of lizards and snakes. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 13 (93), 1–53.
    https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-13-93

    Ronquist, F. & Huelsenbeck, J. (2003) MrBayes 3: Bayesian phylogenetic inference under mixed models. Bioinformatics, 19, 1572–1574.

    Silvestro, D. & Michalak, I. (2012) raxmlGUI: a graphical front-end for RAxML. Organisms Diversity & Evolution, 12, 335–337.

    Tamura, K., Stecher, G., Peterson, D., Filipski, A. & Kumar, S. (2013) MEGA6: Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis version 6.0. Molecular biology and evolution, 30, 2725–2729.
    https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mst197

    Thompson, J. & Gibson, T. (2002) Multiple sequence alignment using ClustalW and ClustalX. Current protocols in. [published online]
    https://doi.org/10.1002/0471250953.bi0203s00