Ameiva Duméril and Bibron

Castiglia, Riccardo, Annesi, Flavia, Bezerra, Alexandra M. R., García, Andrés & Flores-Villela, Oscar, 2010, Cytotaxonomy and DNA taxonomy of lizards (Squamata, Sauria) from a tropical dry forest in the Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve on the coast of Jalisco, Mexico, Zootaxa 2508, pp. 1-29 : 21

Ameiva Duméril and Bibron

Lizards of the genus Ameiva (Teiidae) include 34 species found throughout the West Indies and in Central and South America. Phylogenetic relationships and biogeography were investigated with sequences from portions of the 12S and 16S mitochondrial rRNA genes of sixteen West Indian species and three Central and South American species ( Hower & Hedges 2003). The results evidenced that the West Indian species form a monophyletic group that diverged from the mainland species approximately 25–30 million years ago.

Currently, only six species of Ameiva have been karyotyped. The most common karyotype in the genus is characterized by having 2n = 50 with 26 macro- and 24 microchromosomes. The karyotypes of the previously studied species differ by the presence of biarmed chromosomes in the macrochromosomal complement (data from the ‘‘chromorep’’ database available at site http://www.scienze.univpm.it/professori/chromorep.pdf.). Thus, in A. ameiva and A. exsul , all the macrochromosomes are telocentrics. In A. chrysolaema , there are three pairs of biarmed chromosomes and in A. dorsalis and A. maynardi there are two pairs of biarmed chromosomes ( Gorman 1970; Peccinini-Seale & Almeida 1986).