The Silk roads: phylogeography of Central Asian dice snakes (Serpentes: Natricidae) shaped by rivers in deserts and mountain valleys.

ABSTRACT: Influenced by rapid changes in climate and landscape features since the Miocene, widely distributed species provide suitable models to study the environmental impact on their evolution and current genetic diversity. The dice snake Natrix tessellata, widely distributed in the Western Palearctic is one such species. We aimed to resolve a detailed phylogeography of N. tessellata with a focus on the Central Asian clade with 4 and the Anatolia clade with 3 mitochondrial lineages, trace their origin, and correlate the environmental changes that affected their distribution through time. The expected time of divergence of both clades began at 3.7 Mya in the Pliocene, reaching lineage differentiation approximately 1 million years later. The genetic diversity in both clades is r

SUBMITTER: Jablonski D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11078056 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature