The lowland tropics were once though filled with widespread species, while moderate and higher elevations¹ were thought to contain species with more restricted distributions. That idea is turning out to be partially² incorrect. Widespread species now appear to be the exception, instead of the rule. A new study describes four species once considered to be the collared treerunner, a lizard³ known to the scientific community as Plica plica. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

 

The collared treerunner was originally described in 1758 and has been the subject of many biological, ecological⁴, and behavioral studies in recent years. A new ZooKeys paper by John C. Murphy, Field Museum (Chicago) and Michael J. Jowers, Estación Biológica de Doñana (Sevilla, Spain) describe four new species formerly⁵ thought to be one.

 

"The collard treerunner was considered a single species ranging from Trinidad and Tobago and northern Venezuela southward into the Amazon Basin, south of the Amazon River." Murphy said. " The Treerunners ancestor diverged⁶ about 25-30 million years ago, and throughout this time the South American continent has undergone dramatic remodeling, including the rise of the Andes, rising and falling sea levels, and changing climates that isolated⁷ populations for long periods of time, allowing them to become new species. Treerunners live on vertical⁸ surfaces, such as tree trunks, rock walls, and even buildings and they eat a variety of insects.

 

The new paper focuses on populations of this lizard in northern South America, but in an overall survey the authors examined specimens⁹ from across the Amazon basin and suspect there may be at least another five to seven undescribed species in what is currently considered the collared treerunner. The treerunners from Trinidad and northern Venezuela were 4.5% genetically¹¹ different from those in southern Venezuela, and more than 5% different from those in Brazil. For comparison purposes humans and chimpanzees are less than 2% genetically different.

 

While some species may form by genetic¹⁰ divergence¹²（分歧，差异） without showing any morphological（形态学的） differences from their ancestor, other often show subtle or obvious morphological differences that may be quite easy to detect. The latter is the case with the collard treerunners.

 

Some had as few as 92 scales around the body while others had 202 scales around the body. Some adult males have yellow heads while other have red heads, some have distinctive¹³ patterns of spots while others have transverse bands.

 

Unraveling cryptic¹⁴ species（隐蔽种，同形种） is important for a more complete understanding of biodiversity, evolution, and for long term conservation efforts.

 

The take home message here is that there are many more species of squamate reptiles¹⁵ (lizards and snakes) in the world than previously¹⁶ thought, and it is likely many species have and will disappeared before science is even aware of them. Cutting forests and draining swamps undoubtedly¹⁷ causes extinctions of the species depending upon those habitats. While none of the treerunners described in this paper are likely to be threatened with extinction¹⁸ this discovery and many other similar recent discoveries suggest our knowledge of biodiversity is lacking.

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