Aspidoscelis communis Cope

Castiglia, Riccardo, Annesi, Flavia, Bezerra, Alexandra M. R., García, Andrés & Flores-Villela, Oscar, 2010, Cytotaxonomy and DNA taxonomy of lizards (Squamata, Sauria) from a tropical dry forest in the Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve on the coast of Jalisco, Mexico, Zootaxa 2508, pp. 1-29 : 24

Aspidoscelis communis Cope (Colima giant whiptail)

Specimen analysed: two specimens (CEAC 26, CEAC30).

Distribution: Mexican endemic, distributed along the Pacific coast from Jalisco to Michoacán.

Subspecies: Aspidoscelis communis mariarum (Günther) and Aspidoscelis communis communis (Cope) .

Karyotype: the karyotype of this species was reported by Lowe et al. (1970) as 2n = 46 and it was not studied again in the present study.

DNA taxonomy: the phylogenetic position of this species has not previously been ascertained using molecular markers and sequences of this species are not present in GenBank. We aligned the rDNA 16S sequences with all the so far studied Aspidoscelis species obtained from GenBank (39 sequences). A partial tree is shown in Figure 14 . The phylogenetic analysis indicate that A. communis belongs to the “ sexlineata ” group (bootstrap support 92–97%). This confirms the affinities found on morphological and chromosomal ground ( Reeder et al. 2002). In particular, it is included in a clade with A. burti , A. costatus and A. gularis but the relationships within this clade are supported only by NJ (61%) and MP (54%). Genetic divergence within this group is relatively low, ranging from 1.1 to 5.6%.

Figures

FIGURE 14. Neighbour-Joining tree of 16 S rDNA haplotypes (462 bp) of Aspidoscelis species. Bootstrap values (%) obtained by the NJ, ML and MP are shown. The substitution model selected for ML was the GTR model with rate variation among sites (+ G), a proportion of invariable sites I = 0.4604 and a gamma distribution shape parameter of 0.4453. Asterisks indicate taxon with paraphyletic haplotypes.