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Keywords

convergent morphology, hybridization, lizard, phylogeny, principal component analysis

Abstract

The spiny lizards, genus Sceloporus, are the most speciose genus of reptiles endemic to North America. These lizards are commonly seen doing “push-ups” and head bobs, showing off their bright blue belly and throat patches (figure 5).Sceloporus use these displays to attract mates and defend their territory, and the size and color of patches is the most commonly used character to identify species(see figure 3). Within southwestern Utah, there is a small region where two species, S.occidentalis and S. tristichus, overlap in range (figure 1), and lizards can be found that appear to have patches intermediate between the two species. It has been assumed that these two species are interbreeding to produce these “intermediates”, but this hypothesis has not been tested. We used molecular and morphological data to investigate the following objectives:

  1. Determine if hybridization is occurring between S. tristichus and S.occidentalis.
  2. Test for morphological convergence between these two species.
  3. Determine if currently used morphological characters are sufficient for species diagnosis.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Language

English

College

Life Sciences

Department

Biology

University Standing at Time of Publication

Senior

I’m Just Like You: Do Sympatric Lizard Species Exhibit Convergent Morphology? (Genus Sceloporus)

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Biology Commons

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