Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
Type: Article
Published: 2021-04-23
Page range: 523–540
Abstract views: 115
PDF downloaded: 11

Morphological and genetic variation in populations of Sitana marudhamneydhal and the validity of Sitana attenboroughii

Kerala Forest Research Institute, Peechi, Thrissur, Kerala.
St. Xavier’s College Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli. Tamil Nadu.
Suri Sehgal Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Royal Enclave, Srirampura, Bangalore, Karnataka 560064, India.
Traidhos Three Generation Farm, Traidhos Three Generation Community for Learning, Chiang Mai, Thailand 50180.
Department of Life Sciences, The Natural History Museum, London SW7 5BD, UK. Senckenberg Dresden, Königsbrücker Landstraße 159, 01109 Dresden, Germany. Corresponding author.
Reptilia India phylogeny ratios sample size synonym taxonomy

Abstract

Dewlap morphology and body ratios are two of the main morphological characters used in delimiting Sitana spp. It becomes a statistical limitation when small samples are used in species descriptions, as outliers can be picked to be described as a distinct species. Genetic data has been used to support the distinctness of a species in Sitana. However, species with shallow genetic divergence becomes a problem if not thoroughly examined. We examine and report our findings on morphological and genetic differences in two populations of Sitana marudhamneydhal and one population of S. attenboroughii. The shallow genetic divergence and overlapping morphology shows that Sitana attenboroughii is a junior synonym of Sitana marudhamneydhal

 

References

  1. Amarasinghe, A.A.T., Ineich, I., Karunarathna, D.M.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

    Badyaev, A.V. & Hill, G.E. (2000) Evolution of sexual dichromatism: contribution of carotenoid- versus melanin-based plumage coloration. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 69 (2), 153–172.

    https://doi.org/10.1006/bijl.1999.0350

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

    https://doi.org/10.1163/18759866-08501004

    Deepak, V., Khandekar, A., Varma, S. & Chaitanya, R. (2016b) 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. & Karanth, K.P. (2018) Aridification driven diversification of fan-throated lizards from the Indian subcontinent. Molecular phylogenetics and evolution, 120, 53–62.

    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2017.11.016

    Deepak, V., Khandekar, A., Chaitanya, R. & Karanth, P. (2018) Descriptions of two new endemic and cryptic species of Sitana Cuvier, 1829 from peninsular India. Zootaxa, 4434 (2), 327–365.

    https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4434.2.5

    Evans, M.R. & Norris, K. (1996) The importance of carotenoids in signalling during aggressive interactions between male firemouth cichlids (Cichlasoma meeki). Behavioural Ecology, 7, 1–6.

    https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/7.1.1

    Feltl, L., Pacakova, V., Stulik, K. & Volka, K. (2005) Reliability of carotenoid analyses: a review. Current Analytical Chemistry, 1 (1), 93–102.

    https://doi.org/10.2174/1573411052948424

    Hamilton, D.G., Whiting, M.J. & Pryke, S.R. (2013) Fiery frills: carotenoid-based coloration predicts contest success in frillneck lizards. Behavioral Ecology, 24 (5), 1138–1149.

    https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/art041

    Kamath, A. (2016) Variation in display behaviour, ornament morphology, sexual size dimorphism, and habitat structure in the Fan-Throated Lizard (Sitana, Agamidae). Journal of Herpetology, 50 (3), 394–403.

    https://doi.org/10.1670/15-040

    Kumar, S., Stecher, G. & Tamura, K. (2016) MEGA7: Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis version 7.0 for bigger datasets. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 33, 1870 – 1874.

    https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msw054

    Lanfear, R., Calcott, B., Ho, S.Y.W. & Guindon, S. (2012) Partitionfinder: combined selection of partitioning schemes and substitution models for phylogenetic analyses. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 29 (6), 1695–1701.

    https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mss020

    Macey, J. R., Schulte, 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 (2), 233–256.

    https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/49.2.233

    Miller, M.A., Pfeiffer, W. & Schwartz T. (2010) Creating the CIPRES Science Gateway for inference of large phylogenetic trees. In: Proceedings of the Gateway Computing Environments Workshop (GCE), 2010, 1–8.

    https://doi.org/10.1109/GCE.2010.5676129

    Pryke, S.R., Andersson, S., Lawes, M.J. & Piper, S.E. (2002) Carotenoid status signalling in captive and wild red-collared widowbirds: independent effects of badge size and color. Behavioral Ecology, 13, 622–631.

    https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/13.5.622

    Rasband, W.S. (2004) ImageJ. U. S. National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. Available from: http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/ (accessed 30 January 2006)

    R Core Team (2019) R version 3.6.0. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna. Available from: https://www.R-project.org (accessed 7 April 2021)

    Ronquist, F., Teslenko, M., Van Der Mark, P., Ayres, D. L., Darling, A., Höhna, S., Larget, B., Liu, L., Suchard, M.A. & Huelsenbeck, J.P. (2012) MrBayes 3.2: efficient Bayesian phylogenetic inference and model choice across a large model space. Systematic Biology, 61 (3), 539–542.

    https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/sys029

    Sadasivan, K., Ramesh, M. B., Palot, M. J., Ambekar, M. & Mirza, Z.A. (2018) A new species of fan-throated lizard of the genus Sitana Cuvier, 1829 from coastal Kerala, southern India. Zootaxa, 4374 (4), 545–564.

    https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4374.4.5

    Stamatakis, A. (2006) RAxML-VI-HPC: maximum likelihood-based phylogenetic analyses with thousands of taxa and mixed models. Bioinformatics, 22 (21), 2688–2690.

    https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btl446

    Stamatakis, A. (2014) RAxML version 8: a tool for phylogenetic analysis and post-analysis of large phylogenies. Bioinformatics, 30 (9), 1312–1313.

    https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btu033

    Svensson, P.A. & Wong, B.B.M. (2011) Carotenoid-based signals in behavioural ecology: a review. Behaviour, 148, 131–189.

    https://doi.org/10.1163/000579510X548673

    Thaker, M., Zambre, A. & Bhosale, H. (2018) Wind farms have cascading impacts on ecosystems across trophic levels. Nature ecology & evolution, 2 (12), 1854–1858.

    https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0707-z

    Wickham, H. (2016) ggplot2: elegant graphics for data analysis. Springer, New York, VIII + 213 pp.

    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-98141-3

    Wickham, H. (2017) R package. Version 1.2.1. tidyverse: Easily Install and Load the ‘Tidyverse’. [program]