Adrian Nieto-Montes de Oca

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México | UNAM · Department of Evolutionary Biology

Dentro del campo científico de la sistemática filogenética, la taxonomía describe y nombra especies, géneros y otros grupos de organismos. Como tal, la taxonomía brinda un lenguaje universal para reconocer y clasificar la diversidad biológica y también para arrojar luz sobre los sistemas de valores de las sociedades humanas a través de los tipos de...

Reproductive traits are critically important for understanding how organisms adapt to their respective environments. In this study, we provide information on relative litter mass (RLM) and other litter and neonate related characters of nine female Plestiodon lynxe captured in the field. We also recorded seven body dimensions in 16 neonates and 15 t...

Hybridization between diverging lineages is associated with the generation and loss of species diversity, introgression, adaptation, and changes in reproductive mode, but it is unknown when and why it results in these divergent outcomes. We estimate a comprehensive evolutionary network for the largest group of unisexual vertebrates and use it to un...

Aim: The proximate ecological and evolutionary processes underlying the high biodiversity of neotropical montane cloud forests are still very poorly understood. Climatic oscillations may have contributed to vicariance and cladogenesis, but also promoted secondary contact and erosion of genetic divergence. Here we tested whether geographical diversi...

Geophis laticollaris and G. russatus are rare Mexican snakes currently known in the scientific literature only from their holotypes. However, fieldwork conducted in the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca by us and other workers during the last decades has made a few specimens of each taxon available for study. We review the taxonomic status of G. russat...

We describe a new species of Knob-scaled Lizards of the genus Xenosaurus from the Sierra de Jurez of Oaxaca, Mxico. Although this new species was identified as a distinct, undescribed lineage (and sister taxon to X. grandis) by previous molecular phylogenetic studies of the genus, we documented that it also differs from all of its congeners by a un...

Because of their secretive behavior, the distribution and ecology of snakes and other herpetofauna are often comparatively understudied, which can impede conservation decision-making. The snake genus Adelphicos is one such poorly known group from the Mesoamerica biodiversity hotspot. Within this genus, an especially mysterious species is the curren...

Genomic data continue to advance our understanding of species limits and biogeographic patterns. However, there is still no consensus regarding appropriate methods of phylogenomic analysis that make the best use of these heterogeneous data sets. In this study, we used thousands of ultraconserved element (UCE) loci from alligator lizards in the genu...

Genomic data continue to advance our understanding of species limits and biogeographic patterns. However, there is still no consensus regarding appropriate methods of phylogenomic analysis that make the best use of these heterogeneous data sets. In this study, we used thousands of ultraconserved element (UCE) loci from alligator lizards in the genu...

Here, we describe a new species of the genus Lepidophyma (Xantusiidae) from the Veracruzan biotic province of western Chiapas and adjacent Tabasco. The new species was discovered in a phylogenetic study performed by previous workers, who found that this species was the sister taxon to a clade composed of Lepidophyma lipetzi as the sister taxon to L...

Transitions between sexual and unisexual reproductive modes have significant consequences for the evolutionary trajectories of species. These transitions have occurred numerous times in vertebrates and are frequently mediated by hybridization events. Triploid unisexual vertebrates are thought to arise through hybridization between individuals of a...

Recent studies on the systematics and phylogeny of the blue-tailed skinks in the Plestiodon brevirostris group identified a population from the Sierra Madre del Sur of eastern Guerrero, Mexico, that appeared to represent an undescribed species. Here, we formally describe this lineage as a new species, compare it with the other species in the P. bre...

Abronia and Mesaspis are two of the five anguid lizard genera in the subfamily Gerrhonotinae. Their members are restricted to Mesoamerica, and most have allopatric distributions. Species of Abronia are primarily arboreal and occur in cloud and seasonally dry pine-oak forests, whereas those of Mesaspis are terrestrial and inhabit mesic microhabitats...

We describe a new species of the genus Abronia from the La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve in western Chiapas, México. The new species is known only from the vicinity of the type locality in the Sierra Madre de Chiapas. It is readily distinguished from all congeners by the following combination of characters: lack of protuberant or spine-like supra-aur...

Vague geospatial biodiversity data can lead to confusion regarding the biogeography of poorly-known species, and also complicate efforts for their conservation. The Guatemalan Palm-pitviper, Bothriechis bicolor (Squamata: Viperidae), a striking yet rarely encountered inhabitant of wet Middle American montane forests, offers a case study germane to...

A primary challenge for modern phylogeography is understanding how ecology and geography, both contemporary and historical, shape the spatial distribution and evolutionary histories of species. Phylogeographic patterns are the result of many factors, including geology, climate, habitat, colonization history, and lineage‐specific constraints. Assess...

Introgression is now commonly reported in studies across the Tree of Life, aided by recent advancements in data collection and analysis. Nevertheless, researchers working with non‐model species lacking reference genomes may be stymied by a mismatch between available resources and methodological demands. In this study, we demonstrate a fast and simp...

A new species of Gerrhonotus, previously confused with G. infernalis, is described from the Cuatro Ciénegas Basin, Coahuila, Mexico. The new species is known from the type locality only and is characterized by the following combination of characters: a cantholoreal scale usually present, a dark mark extending anteriorly from the lower temporal scal...

Integrative taxonomy has been generally considered as a goal in systematics for more than a decade. Here, we employed environmental, molecular, and morphological data to evaluate the species boundaries within the short-nosed skink Plestiodon brevirostris from south-central Mexico, one member of the morphologically conservative P. brevirostris group...

Accelerated climate change represents a major threat to the health of the planet's biodiversity. Particularly, lizards of the genus Xenosaurus might be negatively affected by this phenomenon because several of its species have restricted distributions, low vagility, and preference for low temperatures. No study, however, has examined the climatic n...

A new species of hylid frog is described from the southwestern edge of the Mexican Plateau from the states of Morelos and Mexico through Michoacán and Jalisco, reaching the Sierra Madre Occidental in Sinaloa and western Durango. The new species is part of the widespread Mexican hylid Sarcohyla bistincta (sensu amplo) complex, comprised of S. bistin...

Adaptive radiation is a widely recognized pattern of evolution wherein substantial phenotypic change accompanies rapid speciation. Adaptive radiation may be triggered by environmental opportunities resulting from dispersal to new areas or via the evolution of traits, called key innovations, that allow for invasion of new niches. Species sampling is...

Aim Multiple geological and climatic events have created geographical or ecological barriers associated with speciation events, playing a role in biological diversification in Mexico. Here, we evaluate the influence of Neogene geological events and of Pleistocene climate change in the diversification of the genus Gerrhonotus using molecular dating...

Variation in selected characters in the genus Xenosaurus

A new species of Xenosaurus in the X. tzacualtipantecus clade is described from the Sierra Madre Oriental of northern Puebla, Mexico. The new species differs from all of its congeners in possessing a unique combination of characters. The new species appears to be allopatric and fills in the geographic gap between the geographic distributions of X....

We describe a new species of Plestiodon in the P. brevirostris group from the Balsas Basin in central Mexico. It is distinguished from the other species in the group by the following combination of traits: supraoculars four; interparietal enclosed posteriorly by parietals; primary temporal present; seventh supralabial usually contacting upper secon...

The widely distributed, Central American anguid lizard Mesaspis moreletii is currently recognized as a polytypic species with five subspecies (M. m. fulvus, M. m. moreletii, M. m. rafaeli, M. m. salvadorensis, and M. m. temporalis). We reevaluated the species limits within Mesaspis moreletii using DNA sequences of one mitochondrial and three nuclea...

Anolis lizards (anoles) are textbook study organisms in evolution and ecology. Although several topics in evolutionary biology have been elucidated by the study of anoles, progress in some areas has been hampered by limited phylogenetic information on this group. Here we present a phylogenetic analysis of all 379 extant species of Anolis, with new...

Life histories are directly related to fitness and, hence, are the focus of strong selective pressures. However, different life-history traits may evolve at different paces and may respond differentially to particular selective pressures. We examined patterns of evolutionary change in the following life-history traits of xenosaurid lizards: size at...

The genus Sarcohyla is composed by 24 species endemic to México. Despite the large number of phylogenetic studies focusing on the family Hylidae, the relationships among the species of Sarcohyla are still poorly known, and the scarce numbers of specimens and tissue samples available for some of the species has hampered an appropriate phylogenetic a...

Sciurus aureogaster Cuvier, 1829 is a sciurid commonly called the red-bellied squirrel. It is a medium-bodied tree squirrel quite variable in color throughout its geographic distribution; partial and complete melanism are common. One of 28 species in the genus, S. aureogaster is endemic to Mexico and Guatemala, and introduced to the Florida Keys, U...

Aim The aim of our study was to reconstruct ancestral geographic distributions from time‐calibrated phylogenies generated from phylogenomic data to answer three broad questions about the biogeography of skinks in the Plestiodon brevirostris group: (1) Are biogeographic patterns correlated with the formation of the Trans‐Mexican Volcanic Belt? (2) D...

The spiny lizard Sceloporus minor exhibits substantial variation in a variety of life history traits, but the factors promoting this variation remain unclear. We analyzed within- and between-population variation in morphological traits in two populations (El Enzuelado and La Manzana, Hidalgo, Central Mexico), and estimated the genetic distance betw...

Resolving the short phylogenetic branches that result from rapid evolutionary diversification often requires large numbers of loci. We collected targeted sequence capture data from 585 nuclear loci (541 ultraconserved elements and 44 protein-coding genes) to estimate the phylogenetic relationships among iguanian lizards in the North American genus...

In this study, based on a morphological analysis, the resurrection of the name Anolis ustus Cope 1864, is proposed for populations from the Yucatán Peninsula (Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo, Mexico, and Belize), formerly referred as A. sericeus Hallowell, 1856. Anolis ustus differs from A. sericeus by its mean snout-vent length and number of g...

In this study, based on a morphological analysis, the resurrection of the name Anolis ustus Cope 1864, is proposed for populations from the Yucatán Peninsula (Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo, Mexico, and Belize), formerly referred as A. sericeus Hallowell, 1856. Anolis ustus differs from A. sericeus by its mean snout-vent length and number of g...

A new species of the Geophis dubius group is described from the mountains of the Sierra Zongolica in west-central Veracruz and the Sierra de Quimixtlán in central-east Puebla. The new species is most similar to G. duellmani and G. turbidus, which are endemic to the mountains of northern Oaxaca and the Sierra Madre Oriental of Puebla and Hidalgo, re...

Table 2. Selected characters in the species of the Geophis dubius group.

Table S1. Specimens examined.

The Sierra Madre del Sur (SMS) of southern Mexico is known for its exceptionally high levels of amphibian endemism, but knowledge of species’ ranges in the region is incomplete. Here, we report new locality records for Eleutherodactylus syristes (Hoyt, 1965) from the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero. Previously, this species was known only from the Pa...

We describe a new species of anguid lizard of the genus Mesaspis from the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes of northwestern Guatemala. This species reaches a maximum snout–vent length of about 72 mm, making it much smaller than Mesaspis moreletii. In the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes it occurs sympatrically with Mesaspis moreletii temporalis, the only such i...

We redescribe the ecologically unusual lizard Anolis alvarezdeltoroi, previously known from a single specimen, based on newly collected and previously unidentified preserved specimens from the type-locality region in Chiapas, as well as new localities in Veracruz and Oaxaca. We include information on color, morphological variation, and natural hist...

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are useful markers for phylogenetic studies owing in part to their ubiquity throughout the genome and ease of collection. Restriction site associated DNA sequencing (RADseq) methods are becoming increasingly popular for SNP data collection, but an assessment of the best practices for using these data in phylog...

Numerous reptile species have been divided into subspecies. Although this classification may capture the morphological variation within species, it often conceals significant species diversity because many subspecies actually represent species under lineage-based species concepts. The lizard Holcosus undulatus is a common, widely distributed, monot...

Interspecific gene flow is pervasive throughout the tree of life. Although detecting gene flow between populations has been facilitated by new analytical approaches, determining the timing and geography of hybridization has remained difficult, particularly for historical gene flow. A geographically explicit phylogenetic approach is needed to determ...

Amphibians are threatened by multiple factors, including climate change, habitat loss, and infectious diseases. In Mexico, amphibian declines have been attributed mainly to habitat loss, disease, pollution, and in some cases illegal trafficking of species. Despite evidence of amphibian declines, recent studies have recorded species that had not bee...

Interspecific gene flow is pervasive throughout the tree of life. Although detecting gene flow between populations has been facilitated by new analytical approaches, determining the timing and geography of hybridization has remained difficult, particularly for historical gene flow. A geographically explicit phylogenetic approach is needed to determ...

Inferring the evolutionary history of lineages often becomes difficult when gene histories are in conflict with each other. Introgression, for example, can cause DNA sequences from one species to be more similar to sequences of a different species and lead to incongruence amongst gene trees. However, incorporating congruent and incongruent locus-sp...

We describe a new species of Phrynosoma from central northeastern Guerrero, México; perform a phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial and nuclear sequence data to estimate its phylogenetic relationships; and investigate the monophyly of Phrynosoma asio, P. braconnieri, and P. taurus. The new species can be distinguished from all of its congeners by...

For most of its history, the name Anolis boulengerianus Thominot, 1887 has been regarded as a junior synonym of Anolis nebulosus (Wiegmann, 1834) or Anolis nebuloides Bocourt, 1873. However, a comparison of the syntypes and additional topotypical specimens of A. boulengerianus with three topoparatypes and additional specimens of the species current...

Resumen Se describe una nueva especie del género de colúbridos Geophis del norte de Puebla, México. La nueva especie posee la mayoría de los caracteres diagnósticos del grupo G. dubius, pero difiere de todas las demás especies de Geophis por presentar la loreal más corta que la longitud combinada de la prenasal y postnasal, una escama postocular, u...

A new species of Xenosaurus from the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve of northeastern Queretaro, Mexico, is described. The new species differs from all of the other described species of the genus by having usually 2 postrostral scales on each side of the midline (in 84.6% of the specimens, n=26); largest supraoculars that are not, or only slightly, w...

A new species of the colubrid genus Geophis is described from the Sierra Madre del Sur of Guerrero, Mexico. The new species possesses all of the diagnostic characters of the sieboldi group, but differs from all of the other species in the group by having dorsal scales arranged in 17 rows, 133–139 ventrals in females and 130–137 in males, 24–31 subc...

We studied type material and freshly collected topotypical specimens to assess the taxonomic status of five names associated with species of Mexican Anolis. We find A. schmidti to be a junior synonym of A. nebulosus, A. breedlovei to be a junior synonym of A. cuprinus, A. polyrhachis to be a junior synonym of A. rubiginosus, A. simmonsi to be a jun...

Blue-tailed skinks (genus Plestiodon) are a common component of the terrestrial herpetofauna throughout their range in eastern Eurasia and North and Middle America. Plestiodon species are also frequent subjects of ecological and evolutionary research, yet a comprehensive, well-supported phylogenetic framework does not yet exist for this genus. We c...