Abstract
Phylogenetic relationships between African representatives of the Colubroidea have been relatively little investigated. In this paper, DNA sequences of three marker genes were used to identify phylogenetically relevant groups. Viperids represent a basal clade among Colubroidea. The two monophyletic families Elapidae and Atractaspididae are nested within the paraphyletic family Colubridae. African colubroid snakes are found within the cosmopolitan subfamilies Colubrinae and Natricinae, the mainly African subfamilies Lamprophiinae, Psammophiinae and Pseudoxyrhophiinae, and also within the families Elapidae and Atractaspididae. The clade comprising Lamprophiinae, Psammophiinae, Pseudoxyrhophiinae, Elapidae and Atractaspididae is likely to have an African origin, whereas the Colubroidea probably originated in Asia.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Cadle, J. E., 1987, Geographic distributions: problems in phylogeny and zoogeography, in: Snakes: ecology and evolutionary biology, R. A. Siegel, J. T. Collins, and S. S. Novak, eds., MacMillan, New York, pp. 77–105.
Cadle, J. E., 1994, The colubrid radiation in Africa (Serpentes: Colubridae): phylogenetic relationships and evolutionary patterns based on immunological data, Zool. J. Linn. Soc. 110:103–140.
Dowling, H. G., Haas, C. A., Hedges, S. B., and Highton, R., 1996, Snake relationships revealed by slow evolving proteins: a preliminary survey, J. Zool. 240:1–28.
Gravlund, P., 2001, Radiation within the advanced snakes (Caenophidia) with special emphasis on African opistoglyph colubrids, based on mitochondrial sequence data, Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 72:99–114.
Heise, P. J., Maxson, L. R., Dowling, H. G., and Hedges, S. B., 1995, Higher-level snake phylogeny inferred from mitochondrial DNA sequences of 12S rRNA and 16S rRNA genes, Mol. Biol. Evol. 12:259–265.
Huelsenbeck, J. P., and Ronquist, F., 2001, MrBayes: Bayesian inference of phylogenetic trees, Bioinformatics 17:754–755.
Knight, A., and Mindell, D. P., 1994, On the phylogenetic relationship of Colubrinae, Elapidae, and Viperidae and the evolution of front-fanged venom systems in snakes, Copeia 1994:1–9.
Kraus, F., and Brown, W. M., 1998, Phylogenetic relationships of colubroid snakes based on mitchondrial DNA sequences, Zool. J. Linn. Soc. 122:455–487.
Lenk, P., Kalyabina, S., Wink, M., and Joger, U., 2001, Evolutionary relationships among the true vipers (Viperinae) suggested by mitochondrial DNA sequences, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 19:94–104.
McDowell, S. B., 1968, Affinities of the snakes usually called Elaps lacteus and E. dorsalis, Zool. J. Linn. Soc. 47:561–578.
Nagy, Z. T., Joger, U., Wink, M., Glaw, F., and Vences, M., 2003, Multiple colonization of Madagascar and Socotra by colubrid snakes: evidence from nuclear and mitochondrial gene phylogenies, Proc. R. Soc., Lond. B 270:2613–2621.
Posada, D., and Crandall, K. A., 1998, Modeltest: testing the model of DNA substitution, Bioinfomatics 14:817–818.
Rage, J.-C., Buffetaut, E., Buffetaut-Tong, H., Chaimanee, Y., Ducrocq, S., Jaeger, J.-J., and Suteethorn, V., 1992, A colubrid snake in the late Eocene of Thailand: The oldest known Colubridae (Reptilia, Serpentes), C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris 314:1085–1089.
Slowinski, J. B., and Keogh, J. S., 2000, Phylogenetic relationships of elapid snakes based on cytochrome b mtDNA sequences, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 15:157–164.
Slowinski, J. B., Knight, A., and Rooney, A. P., 1997, Inferring species trees from gene trees: a phylogenetic analysis of the Elapidae (serpents) based on the amino acid sequences of venom proteins, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 8:349–362.
Slowinski, J. B., and Lawson, R., 2002, Snake phylogeny: evidence from nuclear and mitochondrial genes, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 24:194–202.
Swofford, D. L., 2002, PAUP*. Phylogenetic Analysis Using Parsimony (* and other methods), Version 4.0b10, Sinauer, Sunderland, MA.
Underwood, G., and Kochva, E., 1993, On the affinities of the burrowing asps Atractaspis (Serpentes: Atractaspididae), Zool. J. Linn. Soc. 107:3–64.
Vidal, N., and Hedges, S. B., 2002a, Higher-level relationships of caenophidian snakes inferred from four nuclear and mitochondrial genes, C. R. Biologies 325:987–995.
Vidal, N., and Hedges, S. B., 2002b, Higher-level relationships of snakes inferred from four nuclear and mitochondrial genes, C. R. Biologies 325:977–985.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer
About this paper
Cite this paper
Nagy, Z.T. et al. (2005). Molecular Systematics of African Colubroidea (Squamata: Serpentes). In: African Biodiversity. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-24320-8_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-24320-8_20
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-24315-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-24320-7
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)