Isolation and divergence of Greater Earless Lizards (Phrynosomatidae:
Cophosaurus) in western North America support multiple diversification
processes and indicate a cryptic species complex
Abstract
Southwestern North America and northern Mexico continue to serve as
ideal regions to elucidate the suite of ecological and evolutionary
processes influencing lineage diversification. The complex geological
history of arid North America, coupled with paleoclimate change during
the Pleistocene and diverse ecoregions makes a multipronged approach to
hypothesis testing necessary. We combine thousands of loci from a
genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) approach along with mitochondrial DNA
(mtDNA) sequences from the Greater Earless Lizard (Cophosaurus texanus)
to examine range-wide diversity and test for cryptic population
structure. We also apply recently developed coalescent approaches in a
Bayesian framework to estimate migration rates. Population genomic and
phylogenomic analyses support the existence of multiple lineages of C.
texanus, with divergence following a southeast to northwest pattern. The
geographic distribution of lineages, coupled with estimated divergence
times, suggest a complex evolutionary history shaped by a combination of
geomorphological shifts and ecological divergence in the Neogene. Our
results also support the existence of a biogeographic barrier at the
Continental Divide dating to the Pleistocene and the importance of
isolation by distance. Migration rates between lineages are low, and
species delimitation analyses further support the distinctiveness of
lineages. Species tree analyses show that C. texanus texanus is nested
within lineages of C. texanus scitulus, supporting the hypothesis that
this system constitutes a species complex in need of revision. In sum,
we find evidence for multiple processes influencing lineage divergence,
indicating that additional multipronged phylogeographic studies using
genomic data are needed on diverse, widespread taxa throughout arid
western North America.