Molecular phylogeny of the genus Eumeces Wiegmann, 1834 (Reptilia: Scincidae) in Iran, inferred from 16s mitochondrial DNA

Feizi, Hiva; Heidari, Nastaran; Rastgar Pouyani, Nasrollah; Rastgar Pouyani, Eskandar

doi:10.21859/acadpub.nbr.3.2.123

Molecular phylogeny of the genus Eumeces Wiegmann, 1834 (Reptilia: Scincidae) in Iran, inferred from 16s mitochondrial DNA

Authors

Hiva Feizi

Nastaran Heidari

Nasrollah Rastgar Pouyani

Eskandar Rastgar Pouyani

https://doi.org/10.21859/acadpub.nbr.3.2.123

Abstract

Phylogenetic relationships among the Eumeces schneiderii princeps and Eumeces schneiderii pavimentatus investigated using 509 bp partial sequences of 16S mitochondrial gene. Analyses were done by maximum-likelihood (RAxML) criteria on 52 specimens from over 20 geographically distinct localities. Our molecular results proposed two well-supported major clades by their phylogenetic positions, genetic differences and unique characterizations in their morphology and habitats including: (1) Eumeces schneiderii princeps+ Eumeces schneiderii pavimentatus (2) Eurylepis (3) Scincus and (4) Scincopus. However, the phylogenetic affinities of Eumeces sp. in the Scincus clade were not resolved. Phylogenetic analyses of the genus did not grouped Eurylepis with Eumeces and clustered it in a completely separate group . In addition, phylogenetic resultsrevealed a monophyletic status for Eumeces schneideri

Keywords

biogeography

Eumeces

Iran

mitochondrial genes

Scincidae

phylogeny

20.1001.1.24236330.1395.3.2.3.9

Caputo, V., Odierna, G., Aprea, G. and Capriglione, T. 1993. Eumeces algeriensis, a full species of the E. schneiderii group (Scincidae): karyological and morphological evidence. – Amphibia-Reptilia 14: 187-194.

Caputo, V., Odierna, G., and Aprea, G. 1994. A chromosomal study of Eumeces and Scincus, primitive members of the Scincidae (Reptilia, Squamata). – Bull. Zool. 61: 155-162.

Dunn, E.R. 1933. A new lizard from Nicaragua. Proc. – Biol. Soc. Wash. 46: 67-68.

Giovannotti, M., Caputo, V., Brien, P., Lovell, F., Trifonov, V., Cerioni, P., Olmo, E., Ferguson-Smith, M., and Rens, W. 2009. Skinks (Reptilia: Scincidae) have highly conserved karyotypes as revealed by chromosome painting. – Cytogenet. Genome Res. 127(2-4): 224-31.

Griffith, H., Ngo, A., and Murphy, R.W. 2000. A cladistic evaluation of the cosmopolitan genus Eumeces Wiegmann (Reptilia, Squamata, Scincidae). – Russ. J. Herpetol. 7 (1): 1-16. ("Novoeumeces gen nov.", p. 11).

Hall, T.A. 1999. BioEdit: a user-friendly biological sequence alignment editor and analysis program for Windows 95/98/NT. – Nucleic Acids Symp. Ser. 41: 95-98.

Kumar, S., Dudley. J., Nei, M. and Tamura, K. 2008. MEGA: A biologist-centric software for evolutionary analysis of DNA and protein sequences. – Brief. Bioinform. 9: 299-306.

Kupriyanova, L.A. 1986. On karyotype evolution in lizards. – In: Studies in herpetology: Z. Rocek (ed). 85-88. – Charles University, Prague.

Masroor, R. 2009. Description of a new species of Eumeces (Sauria: Scincidae) from Pakistan. – Zootaxa 2161: 33-46.

Mouthereau, F. 2011. Timing of uplift in the Zagros belt/Iranian plateau and accommodation of late Cenozoic Arabia-Eurasia convergence. – Geol. Mag. 148 (5-6): 726-738.

Perera, A., Sampaio, F., Costa, S., Daniele, S. and Harris, J. 2012. Genetic variability and relationships within the skinks Eumeces algeriensis and Eumeces schneiderii using mitochondrial markers. – Afr. J. Herpetol. 61 (1): 69-80.

Posada, D. 2008. jModelTest: Phylogenetic Model Averaging. – Mol. Biol. Evol. 25: 1253-1256.

Pyron, R., Burbrink, F. and Wiens, J. 2013. A phylogeny and revised classification of Squamata, including 4161 species of lizards and snakes. – BMC Evo. Biology 93: 1-53.

Sborshchikov, I.M., Savostin, L.A., and Zonenshan, L.P. 1981. Present plate tectonics between Turkey and Tibet. – Tectonophysics 79: 45-73.

Schmitz, A. and Patrick, M. 2004. Molecular studies on the genus Eumeces Wiegmann, 1834: phylogenetic relationships and taxonomic implications. – Hamadryad 28 (1-2): 73-89.

Silvestro, D. and Michalak, I. 2012. raxmlGUI, a graphical front-end for RAxML. – Org. Divers. & Evol. 12: 335-337.

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

Taylor, E.H. 1935. A taxonomic study of the cosmopolitan scincoid lizards of the genus Eumeces with an account of the distribution and relationships of its species, Univ. – Kansas Sci. Bull. 23: 1- 643.

Thompson, J.D. 1994. Clustal W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice. – Nucleic Acids Res 22: 4673-4680.

Xia, X. and Lemey, P. 2009. Assessing substitution saturation with DAMBE. Pp. In Philippe Lemey, Marco Salemi and Anne-Mieke Vandamme, eds. The phylogenetic handbook: A practical approach to DNA and protein phylogeny. – 2nd edition. 615-630. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Wiegmann, 1834. Herpetologia mexicana, seu descriptio amphibiorum Novae Hispaniae. – Lüderitz, Berolini. 88p.

Zuccon, A. and Zuccon, D. 2012. MrEnt V.2.4. The drawing tool for phylogentic trees. – Stockholm, Swedish Museum of Natural History.