Topic
Leiosaurus
About: Leiosaurus is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4 publications have been published within this topic receiving 34 citations.
Papers
TL;DR: It is suggested that morphological and thermo-physiological studies combined with palaeo-niche modeling analyses are needed to test the molecular phylogenetic hypothesis for the majority of the described species in the Leiosaurae clade and better understand the biogeographical history of this clade.
Abstract: The clade Leiosaurae currently includes 18 species in the genera Diplolaemus, Leiosaurus, and Pristidactylus. It is mainly distributed in Argentina from 30° latitude south in the northwestern region of the country, to 52° south in Patagonia, from 63° longitude in coastal areas to 73° along the Andean Cordillera, across multiple habitats and including a small area in Chile. Several morphological and molecular taxonomic studies on a subset of these species have been published, but no comprehensive phylogenetic hypothesis is available for the clade. The objective of this work is to present a molecular phylogenetic hypothesis for the majority of the described species in the clade. We sequenced two mitochondrial genes, five nuclear protein coding, and three anonymous nuclear loci, and implemented traditional concatenated analyses as well as a species-tree approach. All methods inferred very similar topologies. We found the genera Diplolaemus and Leiosaurus to be monophyletic, whereas P. torquatus wa...
18 citations
TL;DR: A new species of the Leiosaurus genus from central-western Argentina is described, characterized by dorsal markings similar to the colour design of some felines like the jaguar.
Abstract: In this paper we describe a new species of the Leiosaurus genus from central-western Argentina. This new taxon presents remarkable differences regarding the lepidosis and coloration pattern compared to the other species of the genus: L. catamarcensis, L. paronae and L. bellii. The dorsal coloration pattern is unique and is characterized by dorsal markings similar to the colour design of some felines like the jaguar. This new species inhabits the highlands of central-western Argentina where steppe bunch grasses with low plant formation and low spiny shrubs prevail. However, little is known of its biology as with the other species of the genus Leiosaurus. The discovery of this new taxon is significant, because it has been one hundred years since the last description of a new species of these taxa.
15 citations
TL;DR: A time-calibrated phylogeny is used to estimate ranges of ancestral distributions and to generate new hypotheses about their historical biogeography, finding evidence for three putative new species-level taxa within L. bellii and five within Diplolaemus species, indicating high levels of geographic structure.
10 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this article, a study of the musculature of leiosaurids was presented, where 162 cranial and postcranial myological characters were added to the 82 morphological characters of FROST et al. (2001) and assembled a matrix including 20 taxa and 244 characters including all leiosaurusid genera, and analyzed them cladistically.
Abstract: We present a study of the musculature of the leiosaurids, an ecologically diverse family of lizards that inhabits southern South America. Our first goal is to contribute to a better understanding of the anatomical structures, and particularly the muscular features, of leiosaurids and the related polychrotids Anolis sp. and Polychrus sp. To study these myological features in a cladistic context, we added 162 new cranial and postcranial myological characters to the 82 morphological characters of FROST et al. (2001) and assembled a matrix including 20 taxa and 244 characters including all leiosaurid genera, and analyzed them cladistically (data set II). We combined and contrasted our own muscular data with the morphological data of FROST et al. (2001) in different data sets (I, II, III) in order to analyze the evidence provided by myology against that provided by osteological and external features. The Enyaliinae is paraphyletic in all our analysis. In our analyses of data sets II and III, the Leiosauridae appears as a monophyletic group. We recovered Leiosaurinae as monophyletic in the analysis of data set II, III, and in the supertree. Leiosaurus genus is monophyletic in all our analyses, except that based on our data set I. Diplolaemus genus is monophyletic in all our analyses. Pristidactylus genus is a clade in our analyses of data sets II and III, while Enyalius genus appears as monophyletic in our analyses of data sets I, II and III. Anisolepis and Urostrophus genera are monophyletic in our supertree.
4 citations
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 1 |
| 2015 | 1 |
| 2009 | 1 |
| 2007 | 1 |