Many herpetofauna species have been introduced outside of their native range. MtDNA barcoding is regularly used to determine the provenance of such populations. The alpine newt has been introduced across the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Ireland. However, geographical mtDNA structure across the natural range of the alpine newt is still incompletely understood and certain regions are severely undersampled. We collect mtDNA sequence data of over seven hundred individuals, from both the native and the introduced range. The main new insights from our extended mtDNA phylogeography are that 1) haplotypes from Spain do not form a reciprocally monophyletic clade, but are nested inside the mtDNA clade that covers western and eastern Europe; and 2) haplotypes from the northwest Balkans form a monophyletic clade together with those from the Southern Carpathians and Apuseni Mountains. We also home in on the regions where the distinct mtDNA clades meet in nature. We show that four out of the seven distinct mtDNA clades that comprise the alpine newt are implicated in the introductions in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Ireland. In several introduced localities, two distinct mtDNA clades co-occur. As these mtDNA clades presumably represent cryptic species, we urge that the extent of genetic admixture between them is assessed from genome-wide nuclear DNA markers. We mobilized a large number of citizen scientists in this project to support the collection of DNA samples by skin swabbing and underscore the effectiveness of this sampling technique for mtDNA barcoding.

Accurately predicting species’ responses to anthropogenic climate change is hampered by limited knowledge of their spatiotemporal ecological and evolutionary dynamics. We combine landscape genomics, demographic reconstructions, and species distribution models to assess the eco-evolutionary responses to past climate fluctuations and to future climate of an Afro-Palaearctic migratory raptor, the lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni). We uncover two evolutionarily and ecologically distinct lineages (European and Asian), whose demographic history, evolutionary divergence, and historical distribution range were profoundly shaped by past climatic fluctuations. Using future climate projections, we find that the Asian lineage is at higher risk of range contraction, increased migration distance, climate maladaptation, and consequently greater extinction risk than the European lineage. Our results emphasise the importance of providing historical context as a baseline for understanding species’ responses to contemporary climate change, and illustrate how incorporating intraspecific genetic variation improves the ecological realism of climate change vulnerability assessments.

The number of tectonic and climatic events that are used to explain speciation processes in the eastern Mediterranean region is low compared to the western Mediterranean. Among them, the emergence of the mid-Aegean trench and the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC) often concurred with speciation time estimates that were inferred from molecular data. We here present a dated molecular phylogeny of Lyciasalamandra from Turkey and Greece based on ca. 4500 bp of the mitochondrial genome (3000 bp of three nuclear genes appeared to be completely inconclusive due to their extremely low degree of variation among taxa). Seven major lineages emerged simultaneously from a basal hard polytomy. A scenario that dates this polytomy to 12.3 and 10.2 million years ago, around the final emergence of the mid-Aegean trench, appears to be most plausible. The MSC can be made responsible for first intraspecific divergence events within L. luschani , L. fazilae and L. flavimembris . Further diversification can be explained by Pliocene and Pleistocene glaciations. Based on levels of molecular differentiation we suggest the recently described species L. arikani , L. irfani and L. yehudahi to be treated as subspecies of L. billae .

The Karpathos water frog (Pelophylax cerigensis) is classified as Critically Endangered according to the IUCN Red List and its distribution is restricted on the island of Karpathos, South Aegean Sea. Utilizing a next generation sequencing approach, we obtained whole mitochondrial genomes of P. cerigensis to determine the species phylogenetic position within the genus Pelophylax and to clarify the phylogenetic relationship between the species’ population on Karpathos Island and the population of P. cf. bedriagae from the neighboring Rhodes Island. High-throughput sequencing generated mean ± SD = 227 945 ± 18 306 reads averaged per sample. High quality reads were assembled resulting in the complete mitogenome of P. cerigensis of a total size of 17 922 bp. Mitogenome organization was similar to other Pelophylax species, comprising of 13 Protein Coding Genes (PCGs), 22 tRNAs, two rRNAs and one Control Region. Overall mean genetic distance for the 13 PCGs, within the Ranidae family, ranged from 8.01% (COIII) to 11.6% (ATP8), while ratios of synonymous and non-synonymous substitutions were <1 in all the 13 PCGs, indicating purifying selection. Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian Inference analyses based on the concatenated sequences of 13 PCGs and two rRNAs (12S and 16S), showed that individuals from Karpathos and Rhodes form a well-supported monophyletic group with low genetic distance between them (p-distance = 0.1%). Hence, the Rhodes populations seem to belong to P. cerigensis and not to P. bedriagae as formerly thought, highlighting the need for revision of P. cerigensis current conservation status as well as further examination of the P. bedriagae species group.