Abstract
Neotropical vine snakes (Oxybelis) have a wide distribution range from southern United States to southeastern Brazil. Notably, the widespread brown vine snake O. aeneus was recently split into eight species, but major geographical areas such as the South American Pacific lowlands remained unsampled. In this paper, we present the largest molecular phylogeny of Oxybelis to date using six mitochondrial and nuclear genes and 10 of the 11 currently recognised species of Oxybelis. Our analyses include the first South American samples from west of the Andes, which we describe as a new species based on molecular and morphological evidence. The new species is morphologically most similar to O. acuminatus, O. aeneus, and O. inkaterra. Although the new species is genetically distinctive and divergent from its congeners, its phylogenetic placement received low support. Our results also suggest that a sample from Escudo de Veraguas Island in Panama represents an undescribed species of Oxybelis. Finally, we clarify the phylogenetic position of O. aeneus sensu stricto. https:urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:CC4E3741-D9DF-4F6C-8D0F-9BD20CB124E5.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2027-2046 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | Journal of Natural History |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue number | 31-32 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 3 Nov 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Funding
This work was supported by the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador; Secretaría de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación [Arca de Noé]. We are thankful to Stephen Mackessy and Felipe Grazziotin for providing locality data of specimens listed in GenBank. We also thank Daniel Mulcahy for sharing sequences of Oxybelis from Panama, as well as Robert Jadin and an anonymous reviewer for their great reviews of earlier versions of this manuscript. Specimens from Ecuador were collected under permits 005 RM-DPAM-MAE, 003-15 IC-FAU-DNB/MA, 003-17 IC-FAU-DNB/MA, 011-2018-IC-FAU-DNB/MA and Contrato Marco de Acceso a Recursos Genéticos MAE DNB-CM-2014-0002, MAE-DNB-CM-2015-0025 issued by Ministerio del Ambiente de Ecuador. Molecular work was supported by the Secretaría de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (SENESCYT) under the ‘Arca de Noé’ Initiative (Santiago Ron and OTC principal investigators) and PUCE-DGA (OTC principal investigator). We are thankful to Stephen Mackessy and Felipe Grazziotin for providing locality data of specimens listed in GenBank. We also thank Daniel Mulcahy for sharing sequences of Oxybelis from Panama, as well as Robert Jadin and an anonymous reviewer for their great reviews of earlier versions of this manuscript. Specimens from Ecuador were collected under permits 005 RM-DPAM-MAE, 003-15 IC-FAU-DNB/MA, 003-17 IC-FAU-DNB/MA, 011-2018-IC-FAU-DNB/MA and Contrato Marco de Acceso a Recursos Genéticos MAE DNB-CM-2014-0002, MAE-DNB-CM-2015-0025 issued by Ministerio del Ambiente de Ecuador. Molecular work was supported by the Secretaría de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (SENESCYT) under the ‘Arca de Noé’ Initiative (Santiago Ron and OTC principal investigators) and PUCE-DGA (OTC principal investigator).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Ministerio del Ambiente, Agua y Transición Ecológica | |
| Secretaría de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación | 003-17 IC-FAU-DNB/MA, 003-15 IC-FAU-DNB/MA, MAE-DNB-CM-2015-0025, MAE DNB-CM-2014-0002, 011-2018-IC-FAU-DNB/MA |
Keywords
- Biodiversity
- Serpentes
- South America
- phylogenetics
- taxonomy