Phylogeny of Neurergus crocatus and Neurergus strauchii in Turkey Based on Morphological and Molecular Data

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We described the phylogeny of the salamandrid genus Neurergus in Turkey using statistical analyses on morphometric characters and a molecular analysis based on 12S and 16S rRNA genes. Two different species, Neurergus crocatus and Neurergus strauchii (N. s. strauchii and N. s. barani), are reported from new localities. Morphologically, the only significant differences between N. s. strauchii and N. s. barani were eye width, head width, and forelimb length in females; and eye width, head length, head width and inter-nostril distance in males in terms of 12 external morphometric measurements, with N. s. barani having larger values. According to PCA, species segregated along morphological axes and all the variables (except inter-limb and eye width in males and except longest toe forelimb, head width, eye width and inter-orbital distance in females) were important in separating species along these axes. We obtained a total of 833 basepairs (bp) of two mitochondrial genes (478 bp of 12S rRNA and 355 bp of 16S rRNA) from Neurergus crocatus (n = 10), Neurergus strauchii strauchii (n = 9) and N. s. barani (n = 9). Neurergus crocatus differed from N. s. strauchii and N. s. barani with sequence divergences of 4.5%–5.1% and 5.4%–5.5%, respectively. However, among three haplotypes of N. s. strauchii, sequence divergence was very low (0.24% to 0.96%). The nucleotide difference between these two subspecies ranged from 0.48% to 1.2%. As a result, N. s. barani specimens in this study were not strongly differentiated from N. s. strauchii, suggesting that their distributions are either connected or only recently separated or that N. s. barani does not represent a distinct genetic unit.