Systematic Research Of The Genus Japalura From China

Japalura is mainly distributed in tropical and temperate regions.There are 33 species of climbing lizards about 25 species(not including subspecies)distribution in China.Hengduan Mountains,South of the Himalayas and Taiwan Island are center of this species diversity.Japalura were classified many times.The taxonomy is complex and contradictory.Previous researches had used only samples of few species or single gene sequence to construct phylogenetic tree,therefore,the phylogenetic relationship of the genus is still unsolved.In addition,the biodiversity and distribution mechanism is an important research problem of biogeography study.The research on biogeography has important significance on discussing of the biodiversity and distribution mechanism.The objective of the study is to study distribution of climbing in China using molecular phylogenetic approach.The studies also aimed to clarify discuss existing distribution pattern,the formation mechanism and its relationship with geological history of Japalura.The phylogenetic relationship of Japalura is unsolved;to solve the problem we collected 163 samples of Japalura,most of them were from the type locality.We amplified the four mitochondrial genes with total data of 2109 bp.Phylogenetic trees were constructed based on single and series gene respectively.We selected 76 samples out of 163 samples for species definition and ABGD method was used for species deliminitation.The result supported the new species: Japalura vela,Japalura iadina and Japalura laeviventris that discovered in recent years asvalid species.Our study explores two new putative species of the genus Japalura.Furthermore we concluded there are 35 species of Japalura in total and 27 species out of them are distributed in China.According to the results of divergence time estimates,the time each species divergence was consistent with the Himalayan geological movement,then we speculated that the existing distribution pattern of the Japalura affected by both geological events and climate.