10.6084/m9.figshare.3464525.v1 Philip de Pous Philip de Pous Marc Simó-Riudalbas Marc Simó-Riudalbas Johannes Els Johannes Els Sithum Jayasinghe Sithum Jayasinghe Felix Amat Felix Amat Salvador Carranza Salvador Carranza Phylogeny and biogeography of Arabian populations of the Persian Horned Viper <i>Pseudocerastes persicus</i> (Duméril, Bibron & Duméril, 1854) Taylor & Francis Group 2016 Pseudocerastes persicus Arabia cytochrome b Viperidae Hajar Mountains species distribution 2016-06-27 15:02:30 Journal contribution https://tandf.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Phylogeny_and_biogeography_of_Arabian_populations_of_the_Persian_Horned_Viper_i_Pseudocerastes_persicus_i_Dum_ril_Bibron_Dum_ril_1854_/3464525 <p>The Persian Horned Viper (<i>Pseudocerastes persicus</i>) is distributed from northeast Iraq through the Iranian Plateau to western Pakistan with isolated populations in the Hajar Mountains of south-eastern Arabia. Like the other members of the genus <i>Pseudocerastes</i>, <i>P. persicus</i> is a sit-and-wait ambush feeder with low vagility, a characteristic that often results in high levels of population differentiation. In order to clarify the level of genetic variability, phylogenetic relationships, and biogeography of the Arabian populations of <i>P. persicus</i> we sequenced 597 base pairs of the mitochondrial cytochrome <i>b</i> of four individuals from the Hajar Mountains in south-eastern Arabia and inferred their phylogenetic relationships including 10 samples of <i>P. persicus</i> from Iran and Pakistan, four <i>P. urarachnoides</i> and one <i>P. fieldi</i> downloaded from GenBank. The four Arabian samples are genetically very similar in the gene fragment analysed and are phylogenetically very closely related to populations of <i>P. persicus</i> from coastal south Iran. Biogeographically, it appears that colonisation of the Hajar Mountains by <i>P. persicus</i> took place from Iran very recently, most probably during the last glaciation, when most of the Persian Gulf was above sea level and did not represent a barrier for dispersal.</p>