The material ancestry and approximate age of parthenogenetic species of Caucasian rock lizards (Lacerta: Lacertidae)

Abstract

Restriction enzymes were used to assay variation among mitochondrial DNAs from parthenogenetic and sexual species of Lacerta. This permitted identification of the sexual species that acted as the maternal parent of the various hybrid-parthenogenetic lineages. Lacerta mixta was the maternal parent for both L. dahli and L. armeniaca, L. valentini was the maternal parent for L. uzzelli, and L. raddei was the maternal parent of L. rostombekovi. The maternal ancestry of L. unisexualis is not as clear. The sample of L. nairensis was very similar to one from a population of L. raddei and either species could be the maternal parent of L. unisexualis. The parthenogenetic species all had very low nucleotide diversity in absolute terms and in comparison to their sexual relatives. The close similarity between mtDNAs from the parthenogenetic species and their respective sexual maternal ancestor species provides strong evidence for the recent origin of the parthenogens. The low diversity of the parthenogens indicates that few females were involved in their origins; the maternal parents of L. dahli and L. armeniaca could have come from a single population. The patterns of mtDNA variation in Lacerta are very similar to those in Cnemidophorus and Heteronotia, establishing recent and geographically restricted origins as a general feature of parthenogenetic lizards.

Evolutionary perspectives on clonal reproduction in vertebrate animals

“…Abnormal functional interactions between the amalgamated heterospecific genomes probably account for why clonal or hemiclonal taxa have such peculiar gametogenetic mechanisms; the genomes of the hybridizing species that yield clonal derivatives must have been divergent enough to disrupt the cellular mechanics of gametogenesis in progeny yet not so divergent as to seriously compromise hybrid viability or fertility. For nearly all unisexual vertebrate biotypes, researchers have used diagnostic molecular markers from nuclear and mitochondrial genomes (sometimes in conjunction with field knowledge and other evidence) to document the particular bisexual species and the direction(s) of hybridization (with respect to sex) that produced each clonal or hemiclonal taxon (25,38).…”

Are the helminth communities from unisexual and bisexual lizards different? Evidence from gastrointestinal parasites of Darevskia spp. in Turkey

“…Several studies on both bisexual and unisexual Caucasian rock lizards have paid attention on morphology, taxonomy, ecology, phylogeny, reproductive traits or distribution of these saurians (Moritz et al 1992, Schmidtler et al 1994, Fu et al 1995, Arnold et al 2007, Danielyan et al 2008, Tarkhvishnili 2012. Nevertheless much less attention has been paid to their parasites, and thus no helminthological data are known for most of the Darevskia species while known data for some of them are partial and scarce, focusing mainly on taxonomy and faunistics (Schad et al 1960, Markov & Bodganov 1962, Sharpilo 1962, 1976, Saygi 1993.…”

Genetic and Genomic Interactions of Animals with Different Ploidy Levels

“…Genetic variation that is observed in some clones can often be tracked from extant bisexuals using cytogenetic, nuclear and mitochondrial markers. Multiple hybrid origins of polyploid asexual parthenogenetic lizards from diploid progenitors are well documented in the genus Aspidoscelis (formerly Cnemidophorus ) [Wright and Lowe, 1967;Neaves, 1971;Dessauer and Cole, 1989], Heteronotia binoei [Moritz 1984;Moritz et al, 1989;Strasburg et al, 2007] and in the genus Darevskia (formerly Lacerta ) [Moritz et al, 1992]. A hybrid origin for some parthenogenetic lizards is less clear or disputed.…”