Patterns of morphological variation in the Schlegel’s Japanese gecko (Gekko japonicus) across populations in China, Japan, and Korea

Abstract

Background: Studies of morphological variation within and among populations provide an opportunity to understand local adaptation and potential patterns of gene flow. To study the evolutionary divergence patterns of Schlegel's Japanese gecko (Gekko japonicus) across its distribution, we analyzed data for 15 morphological characters of 324 individuals across 11 populations (2 in China, 4 in Japan, and 5 in Korea). Results: Among-population morphological variation was smaller than within-population variation, which was primarily explained by variation in axilla-groin length, number of infralabials, number of scansors on toe IV, and head-related variables such as head height and width. The population discrimination power was 32.4% and in cluster analysis, populations from the three countries tended to intermix in two major groups. Conclusion: Our results indicate that morphological differentiation among the studied populations is scarce, suggesting short history for some populations after their establishment, frequent migration of individuals among the populations, and/or local morphological differentiation in similar urban habitats. Nevertheless, we detected interesting phenetic patterns that may predict consistent linkage of particular populations that are independent of national borders. Additional sampling across the range and inclusion of genetic data could give further clue for the historical relationship among Chinese, Japanese, and Korean populations of G. japonicus.

The mutual history of Schlegel’s Japanese gecko (Reptilia: Squamata: Gekkonidae) and humans inscribed in genes and ancient literature

“…Recently, Japanese populations of this species have been considered to be derived from an old immigrant Chinese population. This hypothesis has been supported by morphological and molecular genetic studies ( 9 , 10 ). It has been suggested by paleospecies distribution modeling that G. japonicus was able to settle in Japan after the middle Holocene when the climate became warmer ( 10 ).…”

Insights into the adaptive evolution of chromosome and essential traits through chromosome-level genome assembly of Gekko japonicus

“…Gekko japonicus (Schlegel, 1836), a member of the Gekkonidae family that includes ∼1,000 species, is widely distributed in East Asia. 1 , 2 , 3 Chromosome evolution plays an important role in speciation. Studies on the chromosomes of the Geckkonidae species have mainly focused on karyotype analysis, including standard Giemsa staining experiments.…”

Chromosome-level genome assembly provides insights into adaptive evolution of chromosome and important traits in the geckoGekko japonicus

“…Gekko japonicus, as a member of the Gekkoniade which has over 1000 species, is widely distributed in Aisa (including China, Japan and Korea) (Toda and Yoshida 2005;Luu et al 2017;Kim et al 2019). Chromosome evolution plays important role on speciation.…”