Ecomorphological differences among forest and rock dwelling species of Darevskia Arribas, 1999 (Squamata, Lacertide) in the Elburz Mountains, Iran

By

Yousefkhani, Seyyed Saeed Hosseinian
Nabizadeh, Hossein
Grismer, L Lee

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2022-12-21

Original Publication

Herpetozoa

Volume

35

Pages

245--256

Subjects

Darevskia , functional morphology , habitat preference , Iran , Middle East , Morphology

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/herpetozoa.35.e95257

 

Abstract

Ecological pressure is the major driver of morphological adaptation. Different habitat preferences even among closely related species, often result in the evolution of different body shapes. In the present study, we employed geometric morphometric and principal component analyses (PCA) to compare body shape and head plate morphology among seven species in the genus Darevskia Arribas, 1999 from the Elburz Mountains, Iran that occur in either rocky or forested habitats. The geometric morphometric analysis and the PCA of meristic characters recovered a wide degree of overlap between the rock and forest dwelling species. The PCA of the morphometric characters showed wide separation among the rock and forest dwelling species as well as among some of the rock dwelling species. These results strongly suggest that body shape is correlated with the habitat type whereas head plate morphology and scale meristics are not. Furthermore, the results suggest that the rock dwelling species may be occupying and navigating their microhabitat in different ways. Ecological observations are needed to test this hypothesis.