The colorful giants: Revisiting the systematics of the Anolis latifrons series (Squamata: Anolidae)

The lizard genus Anolis is the second most diverse genus of terrestrial vertebrates. Within Anolis, the highly speciose clade Dactyloa comprises six species series, including the latifrons series. Despite previous efforts to reconstruct its phylogeny, earlier studies have excluded a substantial proportion of the clade’s species diversity.

Here, we integrated both historical and newly generated genetic data to reconstruct the most comprehensive molecular phylogeny of the latifrons series to date including 88 % of the current species diversity. We also conducted a thorough morphological examination of museum specimens representing ten species, primarily distributed in Colombia, including vouchers of A. danieli from the Central Cordillera used in previous molecular phylogenies.

Our phylogeny also included genetic samples of A. danieli from several localities in the Western Cordillera, samples of Anolis limon and A. mirus (two species previously lacking genetic data), and sequences from the Central American species A. kathydayae and A. brooksi. Our results recovered topological differences for A. limon and A. mirus compared to previous hypotheses and revealed that specimens assigned to A. danieli in earlier studies were misidentified and are not phylogenetically related to this species.

Instead, our results showed that the true A. danieli is sister to a green anole clade distributed across the Central Cordillera, Pacific region, and Panama. Based on our phylogenetic and genetic distance analyses, we conclude that A. kathydayae should be considered a junior synonym of A. brooksi. Lastly, we describe the taxon previously confused with A. danieli and comment on the taxonomic implications of our findings.