Deeply Diverged but Morphologically Conserved Lineages in Tornier's Cat Snake (Crotaphopeltis tornieri) of the Eastern Arc Mountains.

ABSTRACT: The Eastern Arc Mountain (EAM) forests in Tanzania have remarkably high endemism. Closely-related forest-adapted species are found isolated on different "sky islands" testifying to allopatry as a major driver for speciation in this region. However, some species defy this pattern. Tornier's cat snake (Crotaphopeltis tornieri) occupies most of the isolated mountain rainforest, despite presumably not being able to move across the arid savannah landscape that separates them. To test contrasting hypotheses of recent dispersal vs morphological conservatism we examined scale characters of 218 C. tornieri individuals and sequenced 80 full mitochondrial genomes covering populations from eight mountain blocks across the EAM and Southern Highlands of Tanzania (SHT). The morphological ex

SUBMITTER: Nielsen TL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11850987 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature