Abstract
A new asexual species of Leiolepis is described from Binh Chau – Phuoc Buu Nature Reserve, Xuyen Moc district Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province, Vietnam to where it is believed to be endemic. Leiolepis ngovantrii sp. nov. differs from all sexual species of Leiolepis by lacking males and from all asexual species by having nine rows of enlarged keeled scales across the forearm and 37–40 subdigital lamellae beneath the fourth toe. Phylogenetic inference based on 700 base pairs of the mitochondrial ND2 region, placed L. ngovantrii sp. nov. among the currently described asexual species and was used to assess the maternal ancestors of the remaining asexual species. Both maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood analyses recovered L. guttata as the maternal ancestors of L. guentherpetersi, L. boehmei, and L. ngovantrii sp. nov., and L. boehmei as the maternal ancestor to L. triploida.References
Aranyavalai, V., Thirakhupt K., Pariyanonth, P., & Chulalaksananukul, W. (2004) Karyotype and unisexuality of Leiolepis boehmei Darevsky and Kupriyanova, 1993 (Sauria: Agamidae) from southern thailand. Natural History Journal of Chulalongkorn University 4, 1, 15–19.
Cole, C.J., Dessauer, H.C., & Barrowclough, G.F. (1988) Hybrid origin of a unisexual species of whiptail lizard, Cnemidophorus neomexicanus, in western North America: new evidence and a review. American Museum Novitates 2905, 1–38.
Cole, C.J., Dessauer, H.C. & Townsend, C.R. (1983) Isozymes reveal hybrid origin of neotropical unisexual lizards. Isozyme Bulletin 16, 74.
Cole, C.J. (1975) Evolution of parthenogenetic species of reptiles. In R. Reinboth (editor), Intersexuality in the animal kingdom 340–355. Heidelberg: Springer. 2395: 1–14.
Cox, M.J., Van Dikk, P.P., Nabhitabhata, J. & Thirakhupt, J. (1998) A Photographic Guide to Snakes and Other Reptiles of Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. New Holland Publishers, London, England.
Dessauer, H.C. & Cole C.J. (1989). Diversity between and within nominal forms of unisexual teiid lizards. In R.M. Dawley and J.P. Bogart (editors), Evolution and ecology of unisexual vertebrates. N. Y. St. Mus. Bull. 466, 49–71.
Darevsky, I.S. (1967). Rock Lizards of the Caucasus (Systematic, Ecology and Phylogenesis in the polymorphus groups of Caucasian Rock Lizards of the subgenus Archaeolacerta); Leningrad (Nauka Press) (In Russian).
Darevsky, I.S. & Kupriyanova, L.A. (1993) Two new all-female lizard species of the genus Leiolepis (Cuvier, 1829) from Thailand and Vietnam. Herpetozoa 6, 3–20.
Felsenstein, J. (2004). Inferring Phylogenies. Sin auer Associates, Inc. Sunderland, Massachusetts. Frost, D.R. & Hillis, D.M. (1990) Species in concept and practice: herpetological applications. Herpteologica 46, 87–104.
Grismer, L.L., Anuar, S.M., Wood, Jr, P.L., & Muin, M.A. (2008) Geographical range extension. Herpetological Review, 39, 238–239.
Kearney, M., Blacket, L.M., Straburg, L.J., & Moritz, C. (2006) Waves of parthenogenesis in the desert: evidence for the parallel loss of sex in a grasshopper and a gecko from Australia. Molecular Ecology 83, 1743–1748.
Kearney, M. (2003) Why is sex so unpopular in the Australian desert? Trends in Ecology & Evolution 18, 605–607.
Leviton, A.E., Anderson, S.C., Gibbs, R.H., Heal, E. & Dawson, C.E. (1985) Standards in herpetology and ichthyology. Part I. Standard symbolic codes for institutional resource collections in herpetology and ichthyology. Copeia 1985, 802–832.
Macey, J.R., Larson, A., Ananjeva, N.B., Fang, 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.
Maddison, D. R. & Maddison W. P. (2003) MacClade version 4.06. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA.
Maynard–Smith, J. (1978) The Evolution of Sex. Cambridge University Press.
Peters, V. G. (1971) Die intragenerischen Gruppen und die Phylogenese der Schmetterlingsagamen (Agamidae: Leiolepis). Zoologische Jahrbücher für Systematik 98, 11–152.
Posada, D. & Crandall, K.A. (1998) Modeltest: testing the model of DNA substitution. Bioinformatics 14, 817–818.
Reeder, T.W., Cole, C.J., & Dessauer H. C. (2002) Phylogeenetic relationships of whiptail lizards of the genus Cnemidophorus (Squamata: Teiidae): a test of monophyly, reevaluation of karyotypic evolution, and review of hybrid origins. American Museum Novitates 3365, 3–61. 7 figures, 3 tables.
Schmitz, A., Vences, M., Weitkus, S., Ziegler, T., & Böhme, W. (2001) Recent maternal divergence of the parthenogenetic lizard Leiolepis guentherpetersi from L. guttata: molecular evidence (Reptilia: Squamata: Agamidae). Zoologische Abhandlungen Staatliches Museum für. Tierkunde in Dresden, 51, 355–360.
Schön, I., Martens, K., & Dijk, P. (2009) Lost Sex: The Evolutionary Biology of Parthenogenesis. Springer publications.
Simon, J. C., Delmotte, F., Risepe, C. & Crease, T. (2003) Phylogenetic relationships between parthenogens and their sexual relatives: the possible routes to parthenogenesis in animals. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 79, 151–163.
Swofford, D.L. (2002) PAUP* Phylogenetic Analysis Using Parsimony (and other Methods). Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA.
Townsend, T. M., Larson, A., Louis, E. & Macey R. J. (2004) Molecular phylogenetics of Squamata: The position of snakes, amphisbaenians, and dibamids, and the root of the squamate tree. Systematic Biology 53, 735–757.
White, M.J.D. (1978) Modes of Speciation, W.H. Freeman & Co.
Wright, J. W. & Lowe, C. H. (1968) Weeds, polyploids, parthenogenesis, and the geographical and ecological distribution of all-female species of Cnemidophorus. Copeia 1968, 128–138.
Zwickl, D.J. (2006) Genetic algorithm approaches for the phylogenetic analysis of large biological sequence datasets under the maximum likelihood criterion. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin.