Species Delimitation Analysis to Reveal the Origin of Turkish Podarcis siculus siculus (Rafinesque-Schmaltz, 1810) Populations

It is possible that the origin of Podarcis sicurus, which was introduced to Turkey by humans, is based on two different source populations or that the samples introduced to different geographies may differ at the subspecies level. The rapid evolutionary processes observed in island species can similarly occur in introduced and isolated populations. In this study Tissues were taken from samples obtained from Zonguldak, Istanbul and Samsun. mtDNA gene sequences were obtained and combined with Podarcis sicurus samples from sequences downloaded from Genbank. Phylogenetic analyzes and species delimitation analyzes were executed. Accordingly results, the specimens obtained from Turkey were grouped into two different haplotypes, similar to their geographic isolation. It has been observed that these groups are different resource groups. Species delimination analyzes show that the differentiation of these haplotypes may be at the subspecies level.