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Despite decades of molecular research, phylogenetic relationships in Palearctic vipers (genus Vipera) still essentially rely on a few loci, such as mitochondrial barcoding genes. Here we examined the diversity and evolution of Vipera with ddRAD-seq data from 33 representative species and subspecies. Phylogenomic analyses of ∼ 1.1 Mb recovered nine major clades corresponding to known species/species complexes which are generally consistent with the mitochondrial phylogeny, albeit with a few deep discrepancies that highlight past hybridization events. The most spectacular case is the Italian-endemic V. walser, which is grouped with the alpine genetic diversity of V. berus in the nuclear tree despite carrying a divergent mitogenome related to the Caucasian V. kaznakovi complex. Clustering analyses of SNPs suggest potential admixture between diverged Iberian taxa (V. aspis zinnikeri and V. seoanei), and confirm that the Anatolian V. pontica corresponds to occasional hybrids between V. (ammodytes) meridionalis and V. kaznakovi. Finally, all analyzed lineages of the V. berus complex (including V. walser and V. barani) form vast areas of admixture and may be delimited as subspecies. Our study sets grounds for future taxonomic and phylogeographic surveys on Palearctic vipers, a group of prime interest for toxinological, ecological, biogeographic and conservation research., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The Lygodactylus tolampyae complex includes several deep genetic lineages of small diurnal geckos from the West and North West of Madagascar whose taxonomy is largely unsolved. We sequenced DNA fragments of one mitochondrial and four nuclear-encoded genes for up to 70 samples across the entire known range of these geckos. We find as many as 11 mitochondrial lineages differentiated by >4% pairwise distances in the 16S rRNA gene fragment, with >9% pairwise distance for the majority of lineage comparisons. Many of these lineages were concordantly differentiated in all of the nuclear-encoded genes without any haplotype sharing, despite the syntopic occurrence of some of them. We therefore hypothesize that the complex contains seven candidate species, but a comprehensive taxonomic resolution is complicated by various hindrances. These include incomplete sampling, with two lineages each known only from a single specimen, and one further lineage with no voucher specimens available for examination. Further hurdles are the probably lost holotype of L. tolampyae and its imprecise type locality, as well as the apparent lack of any morphological differentiation between the majority of the genetic lineages. Based on a survey of historical literature and the travel routes of the original collector, A. Grandidier, we conclude that the provenance of the holotype of L. tolampyae is likely in the wider Morondava area in the West and assign the sole candidate species from this area to this name. We then proceed to describe three species that represent separate genetic lineages for all markers studied: Lygodactylus morii sp. nov., a species common in Ankarafantsika National Park and several nearby sites in the North West; L. herilalai sp. nov., a species occurring in close syntopy with L. morii in Ankarafantsika without any signal of genetic admixture; and L. schwitzeri sp. nov. from Sahamalaza Peninsula in the North West. This leaves three more lineages without a name and with the need to gather additional samples, two from Namoroka National Park and one from other sites in the North West. We confirm the L. tolampyae complex to be an apparently rare example of truly cryptic reptile species in Madagascar, where even detailed morphological examination does not reveal morphological differences among lineages that are clearly evolutionarily independent and require recognition as distinct species due to their co-occurrence without admixture.

Amphibians and fishes play a central role in shaping the structure and function of freshwater environments. These organisms have a limited capacity to disperse across different habitats and the thermal buffer offered by freshwater systems is small. Understanding determinants and patterns of their physiological sensitivity across life history is, therefore, imperative to predicting the impacts of climate change in freshwater systems. Based on a systematic literature review including 345 experiments with 998 estimates on 96 amphibian (Anura/Caudata) and 93 freshwater fish species (Teleostei), we conducted a quantitative synthesis to explore phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and biogeographic (thermal adaptation) patterns in upper thermal tolerance (CT max ) and thermal acclimation capacity (acclimation response ratio, ARR) as well as the influence of the methodology used to assess these thermal traits using a conditional inference tree analysis. We found globally consistent patterns in CT max and ARR, with phylogeny (taxa/order), experimental methodology, climatic origin, and life stage as significant determinants of thermal traits. The analysis demonstrated that CT max does not primarily depend on the climatic origin but on experimental acclimation temperature and duration, and life stage. Higher acclimation temperatures and longer acclimation times led to higher CT max values, whereby Anuran larvae revealed a higher CT max than older life stages. The ARR of freshwater fishes was more than twice that of amphibians. Differences in ARR between life stages were not significant. In addition to phylogenetic differences, we found that ARR also depended on acclimation duration, ramping rate, and adaptation to local temperature variability. However, the amount of data on early life stages is too small, methodologically inconsistent, and phylogenetically unbalanced to identify potential life cycle bottlenecks in thermal traits. We, therefore, propose methods to improve the robustness and comparability of CT max /ARR data across species and life stages, which is crucial for the conservation of freshwater biodiversity under climate change., (© 2024 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Diurnal dwarf geckos of the genus Lygodactylus are distributed in tropical and subtropical regions and live in highly diverse habitats. The genus currently comprises 79 species and several candidates for new species or subspecies. Most of these taxa occur in Sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar, with only two described species in South America. Although the main center of diversity of Lygodactylus currently is Africa, the genus probably has a Malagasy origin, followed by two or three independent transoceanic dispersal events between Madagascar and Africa and one trans-Atlantic dispersal from Africa to South America. A few species colonised islands in the Western Indian Ocean belonging to the Zanzibar Archipelago and to the Îles Éparses. Here we examined L. grotei pakenhami from Pemba Island, L. insularis from Juan de Nova, and L. verticillatus from Europa Island to clarify their taxonomic status and their origin. Concerning L. grotei pakenhami and L. insularis, preceding studies pointed to a relation to species of the African L. capensis group. In contrast, L. verticillatus on Europa Island is considered to be conspecific with Malagasy populations. Therefore, we conducted a phylogenetic study of the African L. capensis group and the Malagasy L. verticillatus group, and examined color pattern, selected morphological characters and two mitochondrial markers (ND2 for African and 16S rRNA for Malagasy Lygodactylus). Lygodactylus grotei pakenhami from Pemba and L. grotei from mainland Africa cannot be distinguished by their scalation, but their reciprocal monophyly suggested by mitochondrial DNA, conspicuously different coloration (both in adults and hatchlings) and their high genetic distances (16.3% in ND2) support the hypothesis that these taxa represent two distinct species. Consequently, we elevate L. grotei pakenhami to species level, as Lygodactylus pakenhami Loveridge, 1941. Lygodactylus pakenhami is endemic to Pemba Island which was possibly separated from the African mainland during the late Miocene or Early Pliocene (6 million years ago). The simplest explanation for the existence of L. pakenhami on Pemba is vicariance. A recent, human-mediated transportation is excluded, as the molecular data clearly indicate a longer period of isolation. Lygodactylus insularis has been supposed to be related to the taxa 'capensis' or 'grotei'. However, it is impossible to discern the relationship of L. insularis, L. capensis and L. grotei by means of scalation or coloration alone. Our molecular phylogenetic analyses reveal that L. insularis is embedded within the L. capensis group, clearly indicating its African origin. The single gene (ND2) as well as the multigene analyses fully support a closer common origin of L. insularis and L. capensis than of L. insularis and L. grotei. However, the position of L. insularis within the clade formed by L. insularis, L. nyaneka, L. capensis sensu stricto and six L. aff. capensis groups is not clearly resolved. Lygodactylus insularis is endemic on Juan de Nova Island, an old low elevation atoll. That all L. insularis mitochondrial sequences are very similar to each other and together form a monophyletic lineage is in agreement with the hypothesis of a single dispersal event to the island. For the L. verticillatus population from Europa Island our mitochondrial data suggest close relationships to conspecific samples from the coastal regions of south-western Madagascar. As we found no relevant morphological or genetic differences between the insular and the Malagasy populations of L. verticillatus, and no remarkable genetic variation within the monophyletic lineage on Europa, we suggest a single, very recent dispersal event, perhaps human-mediated. Although the genus Lygodactylus colonised Africa, islands in the Gulf of Guinea, South America and some islands in the Western Indian Ocean, it seems-compared to other lizard genera-to be only moderately successful in transoceanic long-distance dispersal.

The Lygodactylus madagascariensis species group, constituting the subgenus Domerguella, currently contains five valid species of inconspicuous dwarf geckos from Madagascars humid forests, but at least 18 deep genetic lineages have been revealed by recent molecular studies. Given the high morphological similarity of these lineages, taxonomic resolution of this astonishing diversity requires efforts to correctly delimit species, as well as assigning the available nomina to the species-level lineages identified. We here combine DNA sequences of one mitochondrial and two nuclear-encoded gene fragments with morphometric measurements and scale counts, and report evidence for a species status of most of the previously identified lineages. In particular, we rely on sympatric and often even syntopic occurrence of several of these lineages without evidence for genetic admixture, and consistent with subtle morphological differences. Furthermore, the very high divergences of 7.423.8% pairwise distances in the relatively conserved mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene, combined with a lack of haplotype sharing in the nuclear-encoded genes and differences in scale counts convinced us that most of the other, allopatrically distributed lineages also represent distinct species. We elevate L. madagascariensis petteri to species level and formally name eight new species: L. salvi sp. nov., a species from the Sambirano region in northern Madagascar, previously called L. sp. 8; L. tantsaha sp. nov. (L. sp. 10), a species occurring sympatrically with L. madagascariensis and L. petteri on Montagne dAmbre in far northern Madagascar; L. roellae sp. nov. (L. sp. 17), a species characterized by a striped coloration in all known specimens, from northern Madagascar; L. winki sp. nov. (L. sp. 18), an unstriped species from northern Madagascar but belonging to a subclade mostly distributed in the eastern rainforests of the island; L. ulli sp. nov. (L. sp. 21), a species from the same subclade as L. winki but known only from the Marojejy Massif in the North East; L. fritzi sp. nov. (L. sp. 11), a further species of this subclade from coastal lowlands in the Northern Central East; L. hodikazo sp. nov. (L. sp. 23) known from a single specimen collected at the Tsingy de Bemaraha and therefore the only Domerguella species known from the West region of Madagascar; and L. hapei sp. nov. (L. sp. 26), an enigmatic species from the Sambirano region characterized by a striped pattern on the throat that is otherwise unknown in the subgenus. Three additional deep mitochondrial lineages of Domerguella were identified in our analysis, but could not be further analyzed due to the lack or scarcity of voucher specimens. More field work and collection of voucher specimens is needed to understand their status. Furthermore, the taxonomy of the Domerguella subclade occurring in eastern Madagascar, with three described species (L. guibei, L. miops, L. fritzi), two synonyms (L. septemtuberculatus, Microscalabotes spinulifer) and at least two further deep genetic lineages co-occurring in a relatively small area, requires further revisionary work, possibly aided by target-enrichment sequencing of the respective name-bearing types.

The 71 currently known species of dwarf geckos of the genus Lygodactylus are a clade of biogeographic interest due to their occurrence in continental Africa, Madagascar, and South America. Furthermore, because many species are morphologically cryptic, our knowledge of species-level diversity within this genus is incomplete, as indicated by numerous unnamed genetic lineages revealed in previous molecular studies. Here we provide an extensive multigene phylogeny covering 56 of the named Lygodactylus species, four named subspecies, and 34 candidate species of which 19 are newly identified in this study. Phylogenetic analyses, based on ∼10.1 kbp concatenated sequences of eight nuclear-encoded and five mitochondrial gene fragments, confirm the monophyly of 14 Lygodactylus species groups, arranged in four major clades. We recover two clades splitting from basal nodes, one comprising exclusively Malagasy species groups, and the other containing three clades. In the latter, there is a clade with only Madagascar species, which is followed by a clade containing three African and one South American species groups, and its sister clade containing six African and two Malagasy species groups. Relationships among species groups within these latter clades remain weakly supported. We reconstruct a Lygodactylus timetree based on a novel fossil-dated phylotranscriptomic tree of squamates, in which we included data from two newly sequenced Lygodactylus transcriptomes. We estimate the crown diversification of Lygodactylus started at 46 mya, and the dispersal of Lygodactylus among the main landmasses in the Oligocene and Miocene, 35-22 mya, but emphasize the wide confidence intervals of these estimates. The phylogeny suggests an initial out-of-Madagascar dispersal as most parsimonious, but accounting for poorly resolved nodes, an out-of-Africa scenario may only require one extra dispersal step. More accurate inferences into the biogeographic history of these geckos will likely require broader sampling of related genera and phylogenomic approaches to provide better topological support. A survey of morphological characters revealed that most of the major clades and species groups within Lygodactylus cannot be unambiguously characterized by external morphology alone, neither by unique character states nor by a diagnostic combination of character states. Thus, any future taxonomic work will likely benefit from integrative, phylogenomic approaches., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)