Abstract
Neotropical monkey lizards (Polychrus) are arboreal lizards with compressed bodies, partially fused eyelids and strikingly long, whip-like tails. The eight currently recognized species occur in the lowlands of South and Central America. Based on the largest taxon and character sampling to date, we analyze three mitochondrial and one nuclear gene using Bayesian methods to (1) infer the phylogeny of Polychrus under both concatenated-tree and species-tree methods; (2) identify lineages that could represent putative undescribed species; and (3) estimate divergence times. Our species tree places P. acutirostris as the sister taxon to all other species of Polychrus. While the phylogenetic position of P. gutturosus and P. peruvianus is poorly resolved, P. marmoratus and P. femoralis are strongly supported as sister to P. liogaster and P. jacquelinae, respectively. Recognition of P. auduboni and P. marmoratus sensu stricto as distinct species indicates that the populations of "P. marmoratus" from the Amazon and the Atlantic coast in Brazil represent separate species. Similarly, populations of P. femoralis from the Tumbes region might belong to a cryptic undescribed species. Relative divergence times and published age estimates suggest that the orogeny of the Andes did not play a significant role in the early evolution of Polychrus.
Highlights
Neotropical monkey lizards Polychrus Cuvier, 1817 are restricted to South America on both sides of the Andes, except for P. gutturosus Berthold, 1845, which ranges from the Pacific coast in Ecuador and Colombia into Central America as far north as Nicaragua
After lethal anesthetization of voucher specimens with an intracoelomic injection of Nembutal or T611, tissue samples were taken from the thigh muscle and the specimens were stored in 70% ethanol and deposited in the collections of the Museo de Zoologıa de la Pontificia Universidad Catolica (QCAZ), Quito, Ecuador; the Centro de Ornitologıa y Biodiversidad (CORBIDI), Lima, Peru; the Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig (ZFMK), Bonn, Germany; the Museum of Southwestern Biology (MSB; POE field numbers) at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, United States; and the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, Cambridge, United States
Because our sampling of the "marmoratus" species complex was limited (Fig 1), we considered this complex as a single species for this analysis
Summary
Neotropical monkey lizards Polychrus Cuvier, 1817 are restricted to South America on both sides of the Andes, except for P. gutturosus Berthold, 1845, which ranges from the Pacific coast in Ecuador and Colombia into Central America as far north as Nicaragua. P. gutturosus and P. auduboni Murphy et al, 2017, have colonized islands off the coast of South America—Gorgona Island in Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago, respectively [1, 2]. The eight recognized species [1, 3] of monkey lizards are remarkable among New World lizards in that they resemble Old World chameleons in both morphology and behavior [3,4,5]; they are arboreal, slow-moving lizards with a laterally compressed body and cone-shaped eyes with.
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