Ameiva undulata Wiegmann

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 : 22

Ameiva undulata Wiegmann (Rainbow Ameiva )

Specimens analysed: One female (CEAC25), one specimen from Tuxtepec, Oaxaca (ENS10011) one specimen from Peten, Guatemala (UTA R 50334).

Distribution: From southern Tamaulipas and Jalisco Mexico to Costa Rica on both coasts.

Subspecies: geographical morphological variation is reported in this species. However the last taxonomic review of Ameiva in Central America does not recognize any subspecies ( Echternacht 1971).

Karyotype: the karyotype of A. undulata has not been reported yet. All chromosomes were 2n = 50 and all were telocentric with 26 macro- and 24 microchromosomes ( Fig. 13 ). This karyotype may represent the ancestral condition for the genus.

DNA taxonomy: the 16S sequence (490 bp) obtained from the specimens from Chamela was aligned with a dataset including other 18 Ameiva species including A. undulata from the Izabal Province, Guatemala ( Hower & Hedges 2003). We also include sequences obtained from two additional samples of A. undulata (one from Tuxtepec, Oaxaca and another from Peten, Guatemala). Considering their geographic provenience, the studied specimens of A. undulata correspond to three different morphological forms found by in Echternacht (1971). The genetic divergence among the haplotypes from different locality is relatively high (3.7 – 5.9%). The most basal haplotype is the one from the Izabal Province, Guatemala. Its genetic divergence from the other haplotypes (5.4–5.9%) is even greater than those found between pairs of sister species in Ameiva . For example, the divergence between A. exsul and A. wetmorei is 3.9% while between A. lineolata and A. maynardi is 2.8%. However there is not a relationship among the genetic divergence and the morphological forms revealed by Echternacht (1971) in Mexico. Therefore, the high genetic difference within A. undulata warrents additional study.

Figures

FIGURE 13. Karyotype of Ameiva undulata female (2 n = 50).