Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
Responsive image
Issue: Vol. 5343 No. 3: 8 Sept. 2023
Type: Article
Published: 2023-09-08
DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5343.3.3
Page range: 273-280
Abstract views: 318
PDF downloaded: 18

Clarifying a male color morph of Sphaerodactylus macrolepis Günther, 1859 and resolving the taxonomic confusion on Saint Croix

Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering; Princeton University; William Street; Princeton; New Jersey 08544; USA; Department of Molecular Biology; Princeton University; Washington Road; Princeton; New Jersey 08544; USA; Milwaukee Public Museum; 800 W. Wells Street; Milwaukee; Wisconsin 53233; USA
Molecular and Genomic Pathology Lab; University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; 200 Lothrop Street; Pittsburgh; Pennsylvania; USA
Milwaukee Public Museum; 800 W. Wells Street; Milwaukee; Wisconsin 53233; USA; School of Life Sciences; Arizona State University; 427 E. Tyler Mall; Tempe; Arizona 85281; USA; Center for Evolution and Medicine; Arizona State University; 401 E. Tyler Mall; Tempe; Arizona 85287; USA
Department of Biological Sciences; Louisiana State University Shreveport; 1 University Place; Shreveport; Louisiana 71115; USA; Department of Biological Sciences; Marquette University; P.O. Box 1881; Milwaukee; Wisconsin 53233; USA
Milwaukee Public Museum; 800 W. Wells Street; Milwaukee; Wisconsin 53233; USA
Reptilia dichromatism gecko sexual dimorphism sphaerodactyl Sphaerodactylidae Virgin Islands

Abstract

Many species of sphaerodactyl gecko exhibit sexual dichromatism. In particular, dichromatism plays an important role in intersexual signaling for Sphaerodactylus. Furthermore, some species exhibit polymorphism in male color and pattern. Here, we describe a regional male color morph of Sphaerodactylus macrolepis from St. Croix. After generating both mitochondrial and nuclear phylogenies, we found that individuals with the St. Croix-specific yellow/orange head morph are part of the S. macrolepis clade. This distinct color morph likely contributed to the turbulent taxonomic history of the S. macrolepis species group. Given the documented diversity of the color patterns in this group and that sexual signals evolve rapidly, we suggest S. macrolepis is an excellent group to study the ecological and evolutionary consequences of dichromatism and polymorphism.

 

References

  1. Barbour, T. (1915) Recent notes regarding West Indian reptiles and amphibians. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, 28, 71–78.
  2. Barbour, T. (1921) Sphaerodactylus. Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 47, 217–278, 26 pls.
  3. Brock, K.M. & Madden, I.E. (2022) Morph-specific differences in escape behavior in a color polymorphic lizard. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 76, 104. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-022-03211-8
  4. Daza, J.D., Pinto, B.J., Thomas, R., Herrera-Martinez, A., Scantlebury, D.P., Padilla García, L.F., Balaraman, R.P., Perry, G. & Gamble, T. (2019) The sprightly little sphaerodactyl: Systematics and biogeography of the Puerto Rican dwarf geckos Sphaerodactylus (Gekkota, Sphaerodactylidae). Zootaxa, 4712 (2), 151–201. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4712.2.1
  5. Edgar, R.C. (2004) MUSCLE: Multiple sequence alignment with high accuracy and high throughput. Nucleic Acids Research, 32, 1792–1797. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkh340
  6. Gamble, T., Bauer, A.M., Greenbaum, E. & Jackman, T.R. (2008a) Out of the blue: A novel, trans-Atlantic clade of geckos (Gekkota, Squamata). Zoologica Scripta, 37, 355–366. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1463-6409.2008.00330.x
  7. Gamble, T., Simons, A.M., Colli, G.R. & Vitt, L.J. (2008b) Tertiary climate change and the diversification of the Amazonian gecko genus Gonatodes (Sphaerodactylidae, Squamata). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 46, 269–277. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2007.08.013
  8. Gamble, T., Daza, J.D., Colli, G.R., Vitt, L.J. & Bauer, A.M. (2011) A new genus of miniaturized and pug-nosed gecko from South America (Sphaerodactylidae: Gekkota). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 163, 1244–1266. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-3642.2011.00741.x
  9. Gamble, T., Colli, G.R., Rodrigues, M.T., Werneck, F.P. & Simons, A.M. (2012) Phylogeny and cryptic diversity in geckos (Phyllopezus; Phyllodactylidae; Gekkota) from South America’s open biomes. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 62, 943–953. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2011.11.033
  10. Grant, C. (1931) The Sphaerodactylus of Porto Rico, Culebra and Mona Islands. Journal of the Department of Agriculture of Porto Rico, 15, 199–213. https://doi.org/10.46429/jaupr.v15i3.14233
  11. Grant, C. (1932a) Chart for determining the Sphaerodactylus of the Porto Rico region. Journal of the Department of Agriculture of Porto Rico, 16, 33–36. https://doi.org/10.46429/jaupr.v16i1.15022
  12. Grant, C. (1932b) The herpetology of Vieques Island. Journal of the Department of Agriculture of Porto Rico, 16, 37–39. https://doi.org/10.46429/jaupr.v16i1.15023
  13. Grant, C. (1932c) Sphaerodactylus grandisquamis, a valid species. Journal of the Department of Agriculture of Porto Rico, 16, 43–45. https://doi.org/10.46429/jaupr.v16i1.15025
  14. Grant, C. & Beatty, H.A. (1944) Herpetological notes on St. Croix, Virgin Islands. Herpetologica, 2, 110–113.
  15. Gray, S.M. & McKinnon, J.S. (2007) Linking color polymorphism maintenance and speciation. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 22, 71–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2006.10.005
  16. Günther, A. (1859) On the reptiles of St. Croix, West Indies, collected by Messrs, A. and B. Newton. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Series 3, 4, 209–217. https://doi.org/10.1080/00222935908697110
  17. Harris, D.M. (1982) The Sphaerodactylus (Sauria: Gekkonidae) of South America. Occasional Papers of the Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan, 704, 1–31.
  18. Harris, D.M. & Kluge, A.G. (1984) The Sphaerodactylus (Sauria: Gekkonidae) of Middle America. Occasional Papers of the Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan, 706, 1–59.
  19. Hemingson, C.R., Cowman, P.F., Hodge, J.R. & Bellwood, D.R. (2019) Colour pattern divergence in reef fish species is rapid and driven by both range overlap and symmetry. Ecology Letters, 22, 190–199. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13180
  20. Hoang, D.T., Chernomor, O., Von Haeseler, A., Minh, B.Q. & Vinh, L.S. (2018) UFBoot2: Improving the ultrafast bootstrap approximation. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 35, 518–522. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx281
  21. iNaturalist contributors, iNaturalist (2023) iNaturalist Research-grade Observations. Available from: https://www.inaturalist.org/ (accessed 31 January 2023)
  22. Kalyaanamoorthy, S., Minh, B.Q., Wong, T.K., von Haeseler, A. & Jermiin, L.S. (2017) ModelFinder: Fast model selection for accurate phylogenetic estimates. Nature Methods, 14, 587–589. https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.4285
  23. Kearse, M., Moir, R., Wilson, A., Stones-Havas, S., Cheung, M., Sturrock, S., Buxton, S., Cooper, A., Markowitz, S., Duran, C., Thierer, T., Ashton, B., Meintjes, P. & Drummond, 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
  24. King, W. (1962) Systematics of Lesser Antillean lizards of the genus Sphaerodactylus. Bulletin of the Florida State Museum, 7, 1–52.
  25. MacLean, W.P. (1982) Reptiles and amphibians of the Virgin Islands. Macmillan Education Limited, London and Basingstroke, 54 pp.
  26. Martin, M.D. & Mendelson, T.C. (2014) Changes in sexual signals are greater than changes in ecological traits in a dichromatic group of fishes. Evolution, 68, 3618–3628. https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.12509
  27. McLaughlin, J.F., Brock, K.M., Gates, I., Pethkar, A., Piattoni, M., Rossi, A. & Lipshutz, E.S. (2023) Multimodal models of animal sex: Breaking binaries leads to a better understanding of ecology and evolution. Integrative and Comparative Biology, icad027. [published online] https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icad027
  28. Nguyen, L.-T., Schmidt, H.A., Von Haeseler, A. & Minh, B.Q. (2015) IQ-TREE: A fast and effective stochastic algorithm for estimating maximum-likelihood phylogenies. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 32, 268–274. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msu300
  29. Padilla, L.F. (2006) Geographic variation in color pattern on Sphaerodactylus macrolepis Günther 1859, (Sauria: Gekkonidae). Unpublished M.Sc. thesis, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, 153 pp.
  30. Powell, E.A. & Uy, J.A.C. (2023) Male color polymorphism in populations of reef geckos (Sphaerodactylus notatus) reduces the utility of visual signals in sex recognition. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 77, 2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-022-03272-9
  31. Regalado, R. (2012) Social behavior of dwarf geckos (Sphaerodactylus): comparative repertoire. Ethology Ecology & Evolution, 24, 344–366. https://doi.org/10.1080/03949370.2012.702685
  32. Regalado, R. (2014) Does dichromatism variation affect sex recognition in dwarf geckos?. Ethology Ecology & Evolution, 27, 56–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/03949370.2014.885465
  33. Schmidt, K.P. (1920) Contributions to the herpetology of Porto Rico. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 28, 167–200. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1918.tb55351.x
  34. Schwartz, A. (1965) A new subspecies of the gecko Sphaerodactylus microlepis. Herpetologica, 21, 261–269.
  35. Schwartz, A. (1973) Sphaerodactylus. Catalogue of American Amphibians and Reptiles, 142, 1–2.
  36. Schwartz, A. & Henderson, R.W. (1991) Amphibians and reptiles of the West Indies. Descriptions, distributions and natural history. University of Florida Press, Gainesville, Florida, 714 pp.
  37. Sinervo, B., Miles, D.B., Frankino, W.A., Klukowski, M. & DeNardo, D.F. (2000) Testosterone, endurance, and Darwinian fitness: Natural and sexual selection on the physiological bases of alternative male behaviors in side-blotched lizards. Hormones and Behavior, 38, 222–233. https://doi.org/10.1006/hbeh.2000.1622
  38. Stejneger, L. (1904) Herpetology of Porto Rico. Reports of the United States National Museum, 1902, 549–724. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.11835
  39. Thomas, R. & Hedges, S.B. (1993) A new banded Sphaerodactylus from eastern Hispaniola (Squamata: Gekkonidae). Herpetologica, 49, 350–354.
  40. Thomas, R. & Schwartz, A. (1966a) Sphaerodactylus (Gekkonidae) in the grater Puerto Rico region. Bulletin of the Florida State Museum, Biological Sciences, 10, 193–260.
  41. Thomas, R. & A. Schwartz. (1966b) The Sphaerodactylus decoratus complex in the West Indies. Brigham Young University Science Bulletin, 7, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.part.7314
  42. Thorpe, R.S., Jones, A.G., Malhotra, A. & Surget-Groba, Y. (2008) Adaptive radiation in Lesser Antillean lizards: Molecular phylogenetics and species recognition in the Lesser Antillean dwarf gecko complex, Sphaerodactylus fanasticus. Molecular Ecology, 17, 1489–1504. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2007.03686.x
  43. Yuan, M.L., Frederick, J.H. & Bell, R.C. (2020) A novel colour morph of Sphaerodactylus sabanus Cochran 1938 from Sint Eustatius. Herpetology Notes, 13, 1035–1039.