The South American lizard genus Liolaemus comprises > 260 species, of which > 60 are recognized as members of the Liolaemus montanus group, distributed throughout the Andes in central Peru, Bolivia, Chile and central Argentina. Despite its great morphological diversity and complex taxonomic history, a robust phylogenetic estimate is still lacking for this group. Here, we study the morphological and molecular diversity of the L. montanus group and present the most complete quantitative phylogenetic hypothesis for the group to date. Our phylogeny includes 103 terminal taxa, of which 91 are members of the L. montanus group (58 are assigned to available species and 33 are of uncertain taxonomic status). Our matrix includes 306 morphological and ecological characters and 3057 molecular characters. Morphological characters include 48 continuous and 258 discrete characters, of which 70% (216) are new to the literature. The molecular characters represent five mitochondrial markers. We performed three analyses: a morphology-only matrix, a molecular-only matrix and a matrix including both morphological and molecular characters (total evidence hypothesis). Our total evidence hypothesis recovered the L. montanus group as monophyletic and included ≥ 12 major clades, revealing an unexpectedly complex phylogeny.

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The growing number of gender studies encourages more refined analyzes and greater conceptualization of the underlying processes of gender gap in science. In Herpetology, previous studies have described gender disparities and a scrutiny of individual interactions may help revealing the mechanisms modelling the global pattern. In this contribution we modeled a co-authorship network, a previously unexplored methodology for gender studies in this discipline, in addition to a broad and classic bibliometric analysis of the discipline. Co-authorship networks were modelled for two South American journals, because this geo-political location is considered to present the best gender balance within general scientific communities. However, we found a pattern of male preferential connections (male homophily) that marginalizes women and maintains the gender gap, at both regional and global scales. This interpretation arises from results coming from multiple analyses, such as high homophily index in collaboration networks, lower female representation in articles than expected in a non-gender biased environment, the decrease of female co-authors when the article leader is a man, and the extreme masculinization of the editorial boards. The homophilic dynamics of the publication process reveals that academic activity is pervasive to unbalanced power relationships. Personal interactions shape the collective experience, tracing back to the Feminist Theory’s axiom: “the personal is political”.

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The genus Liolaemus is a group of lizards with more than 230 recognized species, which have been grouped in differentclades and subgroups. One of the monophyletic groups is the one of Liolaemus boulengeri or “the patch group”; this cladeitself is integrated by several monophyletic groups: the groups Liolaemus anomalus, Liolaemus wiegmanii, Liolaemusdarwinii and Liolaemus melanops. The latter group is constituted almost exclusively by Patagonian lizards, and it is ourfocal group. In the present work we describe three new species belonging to the Liolaemus melanops group. One of thenew taxon described, Liolaemus tromen sp. nov., is related to the Liolaemus fitzingerii clade, inhabits in the Center-Westof Neuquén Province, and was confused initially with Liolaemus hermannunezi, a mountain Chilean species. The secondspecies described, Liolaemus purul sp. nov., belongs to the Liolaemus telsen clade, inhabits in the center and north-westof Neuquén Province, and was confused first with Liolaemus boulengeri and then with Liolaemus loboi. While the thirdspecies, Liolaemus dumerili sp. nov., is basal of the L. goetschi group, inhabits in the center-south of Río Negro provinceand was considered as Liolaemus melanops. In addition, we present a phylogenetic analysis based in the morphology and we contribute with a dichotomic key for males of the Liolaemus melanops group.

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