Phylogenetic position of the southern rock lizard Australolacerta australis within the Lacertidae radiation

Abstract

The southern rock lizard Australolacerta australis is a rock-dwelling lizard endemic to South Africa. The phylogenetic relationships of this species with other lacertid lizards are still not clear and have never been assessed in any phylogeny of Lacertidae using DNA sequence data. In this study we employed 3 044 base pairs from mitochondrial cytochrome b, 12S and 16S rRNA genes to investigate the phylogenetic position and the evolutionary history of A. australis. We performed phylogenetic analyses under the assumptions of Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian inference and estimated the timing of the cladogenic events related to A. australis by using a relaxed molecular clock method. Our phylogenetic reconstruction clearly placed A. australis within the southern African branch of the tribe Eremiadini including genera Tropidosaura, Meroles, and Pedioplanis. The former genus constitutes with A. australis a clade endemic to southernmost mountains of Africa. The radiation of this southern African clade is estimated to have occurred during the Mid Miocene (14.7–11.5 Mya), and it was likely due to the climate changes that occurred in the South African region at that time.

Keywords:

• Lacertidae
• Australolacerta australis
• Eremiadini
• phylogeny
• southern Africa
• mtDNA

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Le Fras Mouton, Mandi Alblas and all of the Survey of Cederberg Amphibians and Reptiles for Conservation and Ecotourism (SCARCE) project staff for the logistic support and to Donny Malherba (Cederberg Wilderness Area) for the permit of collecting within the natural reserve. We wish to thank Marco A. Bologna, Monica Pitzalis, Marco Oliverio, Chiara Settanni and D. James Harris who in various ways gave help to this study. This research was partially funded by the project ‘Zoogeography of Mediterranean–southern African disjunct distributions by a multimethod approach’ (Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca, n. 2004057217; coordinated by Marco A. Bologna).