Menad Beddek

Identifying phylogeographic breaks and deciphering the relative contributions of environmental extrinsic (e.g., geological barriers, ecological gradients) and organismal intrinsic (e.g., limited dispersal, reproductive incompatibilities) factors to their persistence remain challenging, especially in the absence of genomic data. Here, we address this issue using parapatric lineages of the lizard Acanthodactylus erythrurus in south‐western Morocco. A previous study based on nine nuclear loci identified two phylogeographic units (coastal vs. inland) whose separation did not align with landscape features preventing migration. The coastal lineage was inferred to evolve under isolation by distance (IBD, the regular increase of genetic differentiation with geographic distance), despite the presence of large rivers across its range. This suggests either that phylogeographic breaks do not align with landscape features, or that the restricted marker set prevented an accurate inference of phylogeographic breaks. We tested these hypotheses using RADseq data and recovered three lineages, each separated by phylogeographic breaks and narrow contact zones with restricted admixture. Coastal populations that had been previously identified to evolve under IBD actually included two lineages separated by a major, permanent river, reducing migration. The inland phylogeographic break, correctly identified by the previous study, is located in a continuously distributed habitat. Neither of the breaks aligned with steep changes in bioclimatic variables, suggesting a negligible contribution of local adaptation. We conclude that intrinsic reproductive barriers, as evidenced by narrow clines in allele frequencies at multiple loci spread over the genome, play a major role in maintaining these phylogeographic breaks. Our results also highlight the difficulty of identifying phylogeographic breaks from pre‐genomic molecular data.

Acknowledging biodiversity within the Linnaean classification system is essential to ensure its consideration in natural history research and conservation, especially as unnamed entities are often ...

The distribution Barbarophryne brongersmai (Hoogmoed, 1972) has long remained poorly documented due to its resemblance to Bufotes boulengeri (Lataste, 1879). The species had long been considered as endemic to Morocco until its presence was reported from Algeria, but without supporting evidence. We report the first documented observation from Algeria based on a population discovered in the Béchar region in May 2025. Multiple individuals at different life stages were observed. This record confirms the species’ presence in Algeria and underscores the need for further surveys to refine its eastern distribution.

A series of phylogeographic studies in the Maghreb identified a repeated pattern of deep genetic divergence between an eastern (Tunisia) and western (Morocco) lineage for several taxa but lack of sampling in Algeria made it difficult to know if the range limits between the eastern and western lineages were shared among taxa or not. To address this question, we designed a comparative phylogeographic study using 8 reptile and 3 amphibian species with wide distribution in the Maghreb as models. We selected species where previous studies had identified an East-West phylogeographic divide and collected sampled in Algeria to 1) examine whether the simple East-West divergence pattern still holds after filling the sampling gap in Algeria or if more complex diversity patterns emerge; 2) if the E-W pattern still holds, test whether the limits between the E and W clades are shared between species, suggesting that common historical process caused the E-W divergences; 3) if E-W limits are shared between species, use information on the age of the divergence to identify possible geological or climatic events that could have triggered these E-W differentiations. We found that the E-W pattern was generally maintained after additional sampling in Algeria and identified two common disjunction areas, one around the Algeria-Morocco border, the other one in Kabylia (central Algeria), suggesting that common historical mechanisms caused the E-W divergences in the Maghreb. Our estimates for the times to most common recent ancestors to the E and W clades span a wide range between the Messinian salinity crisis and the Plio-Pleistocene limit (except for one older split), suggesting different origins for the initial divergences and subsequent preservation of the E and W lineages in common climatic refugia in the west and the east of the Maghreb.