The recognition of cryptic diversity within geographically widespread species is gradually becoming a trend in the highly speciose Neotropical biomes. The statistical methods to recognise such cryptic lineages are rapidly advancing, but have rarely been applied to genomic-scale datasets. Herein, we used phylogenomic data to investigate phylogenetic history and cryptic diversity within Tropidurus itambere, a lizard endemic to the Cerrado biodiversity hotspot. We applied a series of phylogenetic methods to reconstruct evolutionary relationships and a coalescent Bayesian species delimitation approach (BPP) to clarify species limits. The BPP results suggest that the widespread nominal taxon comprises a complex of 5 highly supported and geographically structured cryptic species. We highlight and discuss the different topological patterns recovered by concatenated and coalescent species tree methods for these closely related lineages. Finally, we suggest that the existence of cryptic lineages in the Cerrado is much more common than traditionally thought, highlighting the value of using NGS data and coalescent techniques to investigate patterns of species diversity.
Keywords: Anchored hybrid enrichment; BPP; Bayesian species delimitation; Cryptic species; Neotropics; Phylogeography.
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