Low genetic diversity and relatively strong population genetic structure of Przewalski's Wondergecko, Teratoscincus przewalskii Strauch, 1887, in the Mongolian Gobi Desert

Abstract

We examined the genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationships of 75 Teratoscincus przewalskii from seven different populations in the Mongolian Gobi Desert using partial sequences of the mitochondrial ND2 gene. Our diversity estimations showed a relatively low level of genetic diversity for these samples (Hd; 0.416, π; 0.0009), with only five polymorphic sites that defined six haplotypes. Our Bayesian Inference (BI) and Maximum Likelihood (ML) phylogenetic trees suggested monophyly of a group comprising Mongolian and non-Mongolian T. przewalskii populations. In addition, we found that T. roborowskii, a geographically close species, is the likely sister taxon of T. przewalskii. The approximate estimated time for T. przewalskii’s colonization of Mongolia was 149,000 years ago (95% highest posterior density interval: 51,900–275,000 years ago). Among studied populations, we found that the Gurvantes population was genetically distant from the six remaining populations (mean uncorrelated p-distance = 1.3%, pairwise distance F_ST = 0.57). Our hierarchical AMOVA suggested a relatively strong genetic structure of T. przewalskii at the population level, with 45% of total genetic variation resulting from differences between populations.