Mariana Morando

• Dr. Ciencias Biológicas
• Investigador Principal at Instituto Patagónico para el Estudio de los Ecosistemas Continentales (IPEEC-CONICET)

Aim: Squamate fitness is affected by body temperature, which in turn is influenced by environmental temperatures and, in many species, by exposure to solar radiation. The biophysical drivers of body temperature have been widely studied, but we lack an integrative synthesis of actual body temperatures experienced in the field, and their relationship...

Evolutionary processes behind lineage divergence often involve multidimensional differentiation. However, in the context of recent divergences, the signals exhibited by each dimension may not converge. In such scenarios, incomplete lineage sorting, gene flow, and scarce phenotypic differentiation are pervasive. Here, we integrated genomic (RAD loci...

Environmental factors, such as temperature, precipitation, and elevation, explain most of the variation in species richness at the global scale. Nevertheless, richness patterns may have different drivers across taxa and regions. To date, a comprehensive global examination of how various factors such as climate or topography drive patterns of specie...

In this study, we detangled the evolutionary history of the Patagonian lizard clade Liolaemus kingii, coupling dense geographic sampling and novel computational analytical approaches. We analyzed nuclear and mitochondrial data (restriction site-associated DNA sequencing and cytochrome b) to hypothesize and evaluate species limits, phylogenetic rela...

We describe Liolaemus attenboroughi sp. nov., a lizard distributed in the northwestern Patagonian Steppe of Chubut province (Argentina) previously confused with L. kingii (Bell 1843). Recent studies based on molecular evidence supports its evolutionary independence. Here we provide a morphological diagnosis of this lineage, comparisons between thre...

Selective pressures vary throughout the range of a species distribution, thus favoring different phenotypes. Climate gradients in particular exert selection on the ecological and physiological performance of organisms, which often promotes morphological variation. In Patagonia, a region with harsh climatic conditions, the sister genera Phymaturus a...

Aim Viviparity has evolved more times in squamates than in any other vertebrate group; therefore, squamates offer an excellent model system in which to study the patterns, drivers and implications of reproductive mode evolution. Based on current species distributions, we examined three selective forces hypothesized to drive the evolution of squamat...

To identify the threats a species is facing, the first step is to locate its populations and their distribution. When other ecological studies are not possible, knowing the distribution of a species and if possible, inferences about its density, can be enough to make informed management decisions for conservation priorities. In addition, with up-to...

Evolutionary correlations between phenotypic and environmental traits characterize adaptive radiations. However, the lizard genus Liolaemus, one of the most ecologically diverse terrestrial vertebrate radiations on earth, has so far shown limited or mixed evidence of adaptive diversification in phenotype. Restricted use of comprehensive environment...

Editor: Antonieta Labra, Chile. Resumen.-Liolaemus es una de las mayores radiaciones de lagartos con más de 289 especies descritas. Dentro del grupo L. fitzingerii, encontramos la especie L. xanthoviridis, la cual se distribuye en un área alrededor de la meseta de Montemayor en la costa atlántica oriental de la provincia de Chubut, Argentina. Sin e...

Motivation: Transposable elements (TEs) are ubiquitous in genomes and many remain active. TEs comprise an important fraction of the transcriptomes with potential effects on the host genome, either by generating deleterious mutations or promoting evolutionary novelties. However, their functional study is limited by the difficulty in their identific...

Liolaemus duellmani is a microendemic lizard described from southern Mendoza, Argentina, representing the southernmost distribution of the Liolaemus montanus species group. The original description was based on a small batch of preserved material and a juvenile collected alive. Along the years, this poorly known species was rarely collected or obse...

Understanding the factors that cause heterogeneity among gene trees can increase the accuracy of species trees. Discordant signals across the genome are commonly produced by incomplete lineage sorting (ILS) and introgression, which in turn can result in reticulate evolution. Species tree inference using the multispecies coalescent is designed to de...

Hybridization is an evolutionary process that can generate diverse outcomes, such as reinforcing species boundaries, generating new species, or facilitating the introgression of locally-adapted alleles into new genomic backgrounds. Liolaemus is a highly diverse clade of South American lizards with ~260 species and as many as ten new species are des...

Three Liolaemus species are cited as new from La Rioja province. Two were found in a poorly explored area in the top of an isolated mountain system in the middle of the Dry Chaco and other from the eastern edge of a salt-pan basin in the southwest limit of the Chaco biogeographic formation. We also present an updated checklist of La Rioja lizards.

A new species of the Liolaemus capillitas clade is described. Liolaemus galactostictos sp. nov. differs from other members of its group by a combination of morphological and molecular traits, in particular its black dorsal coloration pattern not found in any other Liolaemus species. Liolaemus galactostictos sp. nov. is only known from its type loca...

Recent conceptual and methodological advances have enabled an increasing number of studies to address the problem of species delimitation in a comprehensive manner. This is of particular interest in cases of species whose divergence times are recent and/or effective population sizes are large, where the conclusions obtained from a single source of...

In Argentina, the Monte ecoregion extends for more than 2,000 km from NW Argentina to boreal Patagonia, and includes many salt-pans and barren flatlands colonized by the monophyletic Liolaemus anomalus group that includes seven species. Some of their external morphological characteristics and behaviors are very unusual for the genus, and this has l...

During the last two decades, regional exploration coupled with dense geographic sampling, new molecular techniques, and phylogeographic approaches have led to the discovery of unexpected hidden diversity. These data have expanded inferences about evolutionary and demographic processes to explain patterns of geographic genetic distribution, phylogen...

Patagonia has a great diversity of lizards, including 6 families, 11 genera, and 163 species. The majority of this diversity with documented geographical records corresponds to the Liolaemidae family (Phymaturus and Liolaemus). Latitudinally, lizard richness is higher between 37° and 39° S, decreasing gradually until latitude 54° S; longitudinally,...

The diversity of the Patagonian lizard fauna is a combination of low diversity at higher levels, e.g., families, some of them almost marginal to the region, coupled with very high species diversity concentrated in two genera Liolaemus and Phymaturus, and a high number of endemics. The number of described species almost tripled since Cei’s last and...

The repeatability of findings is the key factor behind scientific reliability, and the failure to reproduce scientific findings has been termed the ‘replication crisis’. Geometric morphometrics is an established tool in evolutionary biology. However, different operators (and/or different methods) could act as large sources of variation in the data...

Recent conceptual and methodological advances have enabled an increasing number of studies to address the problem of species delimitation in a comprehensive manner. This is of particular interest in cases of species whose divergence times are recent, where the conclusions obtained from a single source of evidence can lead to the incorrect delimitat...

The local spatial distribution of individual animals is often described in terms of home range (HR), whereas territory traditionally refers to an area defended for exclusive use. The size of the HR is considered an important indicator of the behavioral characteristics of an animal, and it can be influenced by factors such as sex, body size, populat...

Aim Clutch size is a key life‐history trait. In lizards, it ranges over two orders of magnitude. The global drivers of spatial and phylogenetic variation in clutch have been extensively studied in birds, but such tests in other organisms are lacking. To test the generality of latitudinal gradients in clutch size, and their putative drivers, we pres...

Lizards are a major component of temperate-to-tropical terrestrial vertebrate biotas, and have played a central role as model systems for evolutionary and ecological research. The most diverse lizard group of the southern half of South America is the clade Liolaemini (=family Liolaemidae), which includes three genera characterized by large differen...

Phylogenomic approaches now generate hundreds of loci representative of the whole genome that can be used for phylogenetic analyses. The South American lizard genus Liolaemus is the most species-rich vertebrate radiation from temperate zones (more than 265 described species), yet most higher-level phylogenetic relationships within Liolaemus remain...

Macroevolutionary and biogeographical studies commonly apply multiple models to test state-dependent diversification. These models track the association between states of interest along a phylogeny, although many of them do not consider whether different clades might be evolving under different evolutionary drivers. Yet, they are still commonly app...

This book presents a critical and integrated review of lizards from Patagonia. It summarizes the region’s geomorphological history and climatic aspects, which makes it possible to interpret, from an evolutionary perspective, the latest findings on the various natural history aspects of its lizard fauna. As such, the book will appeal to all research...

Replicability of findings is the key factor of scientific reliability. However, literature on this topic is scarce and apparently taboo for large scientific areas. Some authors named the failure to reproduce scientific findings ‘replication crisis’. Geometric morphometrics, a vastly used technique, is especially silent on replication crisis concern...

Macroevolutionary studies commonly apply multiple models to test state-dependent diversification. These models track the association between states of interest along a phylogeny, but they do not consider whether independent shifts in character states are associated with shifts in diversification rates. This potentially problematic issue has receive...

Los gradientes climáticos ejercen selección sobre el rendimiento ecológico y fisiológico de los organismos, lo que a menudo promueve la variación morfológica. Esto se evidencia particularmente en reptiles debido a su dependencia de variables como la temperatura y la precipitación. En Patagonia se encuentran dos clados hermanos de lagartijas, Liolae...

Table S1. Detail of the specimens used for this study. LJAMM: Herpetological collection of the Centro Nacional Patagónico (CENPAT-CONICET), Puerto Madryn, Chubut, Argentina. ZVC-R: Vertebrate Zoology collection of the Faculty of Sciences, Montevideo, Uruguay. UFRGST: collection of the Herpetology Laboratory of the Federal University of Rio Grande d...

Table S2. Posterior probabilities of the number of species and each candidate species estimated by BPP 3.4 for all the replicates run. Each combination of starting tree and priors for Θ and τ (a-d) where run under four different seeds which are indicated with ’. Top1: ((((A, B), H), (C, D)), (E, (F, G))); Top2: ((((A, H), B), (C, D)), (E, (F, G)));...

Table S3. Lineage assignment for each of the 113 individual of Liolaemus wiegmannii with ddRADseq data, according to DAPC and RAxML. A: South-Central Argentina; B: Uruguay; D: Catamarca; E: Tucumán & Salta I; F: Jujuy and G: Salta II. All the individuals that belong to the lineage Mendoza C from BPP are recovered as part of lineage A (using ddRADse...

Figure S2. K values explored for the Liolaemus wiegmannii complex based on 3912 SNPs. Blue circle represents the best K under BIC (A) and AIC (B) criteria.

Figure S1. Bayesian cytochrome b genealogy of the Liolaemus wiegmannii complex considering haplotypes of L. gardeli and two unique haplotypes of Argentina: LJAMM 13266 (25 km N Villa Mercedes, General Pedernera Department, San Luis Province) and LJAMM 3132 (Copacabana, Sierras de Córdoba, Córdoba Province). Correspondence between colors and lineage...

In this contribution, the aspects of reptile and amphibian speciation that emerged from research performed over the past decade are reviewed. First, this study assesses how patterns and processes of speciation depend on knowing the taxonomy of the group in question, and discuss how integrative taxonomy has contributed to speciation research in thes...

The consequences of past or future climate change have been studied in many physical and biological systems, and their effects could change the ecology and spatial distribution of suitable areas for a wide variety of organisms. We analyzed the environmental and geographic space of the current suitable area projecting these conditions into Mid-Holoc...

Convergence is a pervasive phenomenon in the Tree of Life, and evolution of similar phenotypes sharing the same environmental conditions is expected in phylogeneti-cally closely related species. In contrast, contingent factors are probably more influential in shaping phenotypic diversity for distantly related taxa. Here, we test putative convergent...

Speciation processes have long been inferred from phylogenetic, phylogeographic, and biogeographic pattern-driven perspectives. Now much current speciation research is attempting to more directly describe the underlying processes and mechanisms of divergence leading to speciation. Ideally, researchers should integrate both process-and pattern-based...

Speciation processes have long been inferred from phylogenetic, phylogeographic, and biogeographic pattern-driven perspectives. Now much current speciation research is attempting to more directly describe the underlying processes and mechanisms of divergence leading to speciation. Ideally, researchers should integrate both process- and pattern-base...

This note presents a new department record and the southernmost records for Liolaemus grosseorum in Argentina in Neuquén province. In addition, two new records are presented for the species in La Pampa province the northeastmost records for the species in Argentina.

During the speciation process sibling lineages accumulate differences in time (e.g. genetic, morphological, and/or ecological). Phenotypic traits such as size or shape, however, could experience rapid changes or show stasis depending on their role in survival and reproduction. The clade Phymaturus patagonicus includes 26 species characterized by a...

Patagonia is a sparsely populated region located at the southern end of South America, shared by Argentina and Chile. The region comprises the southern section of the Andes Mountains as well as the deserts, pampas and grasslands east of this southern portion of the Andes. Almost all Patagonia is located in the eastern side of the Andes, politically...

Much of southern South America consists of diverse montane, arid, and semiarid regions characterized by high squamate endemism as a result of a complex interplay between lineage histories, Tertiary geological changes, and Pleistocene climatic shifts. Here we provide an updated review of lizard biodiversity in the northern ecoregion of the Monte Des...

Hybridization is likely to occur more often between closely related taxa that have had insufficient time to diverge to the point of reproductive incompatibility; hybridization between deeply divergent lineages is rare. In squamate reptiles, hybridization has been proposed as a possible explanation for the extensive paraphyly observed in mitochondri...

Homonota is a gecko distributed in central and southern South America with 12 species allocated in three groups. In this work, we performed molecular and morphological analyses of samples of Homonota from the central region of northern Paraguay, comparing the data with those of related species of the group: H.horrida and H.septentrionalis . We foun...

Background. The consequences of past or future climate change have been studied in many physical and biological systems, and their effects could change the ecology and spatial distribution of suitable areas for a wide variety of organisms. Methods. We analyzed the environmental and geographic space of the current suitable area and we projected thes...

Background. The consequences of past or future climate change have been studied in many physical and biological systems, and their effects could change the ecology and spatial distribution of suitable areas for a wide variety of organisms. Methods. We analyzed the environmental and geographic space of the current suitable area and we projected thes...

Two new species of the Liolaemus donosobarrosi clade are described. Liolaemus tirantii sp. nov. and Liolaemus calliston sp. nov. differ from other members of their clade by a combination of coloration characters, morphometric and molecular traits. Liolaemus tirantii sp. nov. is known from three localities separated only a few kilometers from each o...

We present different approaches to a multi-locus phylogeny for the Liolaemus elongatus-kriegi group, including almost all species and recognized lineages. We sequenced two mitochondrial and five nuclear gene regions for 123 individuals from 35 taxa, and compared relationships resolved from concatenated and species tree methods. The L. elongatus-kri...

Microsatellites are useful markers to address questions of recent gene flow, given that they are relatively neutral to natural selection and show high levels of variability. To date, only one study has used these markers to answer ecological questions in the speciesrich lizard genus Liolaemus. Here, we use microsatellite loci to estimate population...

Sexes can differ in features associated with differential reproduction, which can be used during courtship or aggressive encounters. Some traits tend to evolve independently between sexes and emerge as sexually dimorphic within the organismal phenotype. We characterize such a relationship by estimating the phenotypic integration of the head morphol...

Homonota is a Neotropical genus of nocturnal lizards characterized by the following combination of characters: absence of femoral pores, infradigital lamellae not dilated, claws without sheath, inferior lamellae laterally not denticulate, and presence of a ceratobranchial groove. Currently the genus is composed of 10 species assembled in three grou...

Appendices Supplementary information (Appendix S1–S6)

Conference presentation

Explanations for gene tree discordance with respect to a species tree are commonly attributed to deep coalescence (also known as incomplete lineage sorting [ILS]), as well as different evolutionary processes such as hybridization, horizontal gene transfer and gene duplication. Among these, deep coalescence is usually quantified as the number of ext...

The first record of TACHYMENIS CHILIENSIS CHILIENSIS preying on Liolaemus bibronii.

In this study, we present a phylogeographic analysis of a group of lizards distributed in north-western Patagonia, the Liolaemus elongatus complex. We sequenced 581 individuals for one mitochondrial gene (cytochrome-b), and for a subset, we sequenced another mitochondrial gene (12S rRNA) and two nuclear genes: kinesin family member 24 (KIF24) and t...

We provide new geographic records for Pristidactylus nigroiugulus Cei, Scolaro & Videla, 2001 from Argentina. We present the first record for Santa Cruz province and the southernmost records of the species based on lizards collected in the austral summers of 2012/2013 and 2013/2014. Based on a museum specimen, we extend the species distribution to...