10.6084/m9.figshare.2059545.v1 Khaled Merabet Khaled Merabet Eugenia Sanchez Eugenia Sanchez Abdelhak Dahmana Abdelhak Dahmana Sergé Bogaerts Sergé Bogaerts David Donaire David Donaire Sebastian Steinfartz Sebastian Steinfartz Ulrich Joger Ulrich Joger Miguel Vences Miguel Vences Mokrane Karar Mokrane Karar Aissa Moali Aissa Moali Phylogeographic relationships and shallow mitochondrial divergence of Algerian populations of Salamandra algira Brill Online 2015 Algeria Amphibia biogeography Caudata Morocco phylogeography Salamandra algira Salamandridae Zoology Genetics 2015-12-31 07:28:21 Dataset https://brill.figshare.com/articles/dataset/Phylogeographic_relationships_and_shallow_mitochondrial_divergence_of_Algerian_populations_of_Salamandra_algira/2059545 The North African fire salamander, <i>Salamandra algira</i>, is distributed in Algeria, Morocco and Ceuta (Spanish territory located on the north coast of Africa), but until now rather limited information has been available on the populations across the Algerian part of its range. We here provide a first analysis of the phylogeography of this species in Algeria, based on 44 samples from populations distributed across 15 localities in Central Algeria. We sequenced three segments of mitochondrial DNA, covering 12S rRNA, cytochrome <i>b </i>(Cytb) and the D-loop. The mtDNA sequences of the Algerian samples were strongly different from the Moroccan populations occurring west of the Moulouya River (corresponding to the subspecies <i>S. a. tingitana </i>and <i>S. a. splendens</i>) but sister to the genetically rather similar population from the Beni Snassen Massif in eastern Morocco (subspecies <i>S. algira spelaea</i>). Among the Algerian specimens studied, those from the westernmost site, Chrea Massif, were the sister clade to the remaining populations, and the overall genetic divergence was low, with a maximum of five mutational steps in a 295 bp fragment of cytochrome <i>b</i>.