Abstract

MEDINA, Cintia Débora; AVILA, Luciano Javier  and  MORANDO, Mariana. Hacia una Taxonomía Integral: poniendo a prueba especies candidatas relacionadas a Liolaemus buergeri Werner 1907 (Iguania: Liolaemini) mediante análisis morfológicos. Cuad. herpetol. [online]. 2013, vol.27, n.1, pp.27-34. ISSN 1852-5768.

Traditional taxonomy has usually been based mainly on characters of external or internal morphology to delimit morphospecies. Recent years have seen the emergence of "integrative taxonomy", with the objective of integrating the basic concepts and methods of traditional taxonomy with new concepts and methodologies. In this conceptual framework, species are treated as hypotheses and stable species' hypotheses are those supported by different types of independent characters. The lizard genus Liolaemus has the highest species richness of southern South America, and several clades and complexes have been proposed. One of these is the kriegi group, which includes the species L. buergeri, L. ceii and L. kriegi. Based on three mitochondrial markers, three haploclades closely related to L. buergeri have been proposed as candidate species: L. sp. A, L. sp. B and L sp. C. The aim of this paper is to analyze the morphological variation in the proposed clades and individuals from the type locality of L. buergeri, in order to provide a source of new and independent evidence for the analysis of candidate species proposed for this group. We studied individuals across all the distributional range of L. buergeri and the candidate species. For each specimen we registered morphometric and meristic characters, and precloacal pores in males. We found significant differences among taxa for the analyzed variables, as well as in the degree of sexual dimorphism. The results of these analyzes indicate that the candidate taxa can be identified morphologically and therefore support, based on independent evidence, the "candidate species" hypotheses proposed based on mitochondrial DNA.

Keywords : Lizards; Sexual dimorphism; Morphological variation; Patagonia; Systematics.

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