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. 2023 Apr 4;8(4):475-478.
doi: 10.1080/23802359.2023.2195510. eCollection 2023.

The complete mitochondrial genome of the Critically Endangered Saba Green Iguana, Iguana iguana (Squamata: Iguanidae)

Matthijs P van den Burg  1   2 , Ana Ramón-Laca  1   3 , Albert Carné Constans  1   4 , Adolphe O Debrot  5 , David R Vieites  1
Affiliations

The complete mitochondrial genome of the Critically Endangered Saba Green Iguana, Iguana iguana (Squamata: Iguanidae)

Matthijs P van den Burg et al. Mitochondrial DNA B Resour. .

Abstract

The populations of native iguanas in the Caribbean Lesser Antilles are threatened by the wide occurrence and spread of non-native iguanas. Until recently, competitive hybridization was not believed to threaten the Saba Green Iguana, a subpopulation of Iguana iguana (Linnaeus, 1758) from the island of Saba. However, the arrival of non-native iguanas has put the native population at risk, leading to a change in the conservation status of the Saba Green Iguana to Critically Endangered, according to guidelines from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Here, we generated the complete mitogenome of the Saba Green Iguana using Oxford Nanopore long-read technology. The mitogenome is 16,626 bp long and has 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, and a control region (1194 bp). Noteworthy, this is only the second published mitogenome for the Iguana iguana species complex, despite the known high intraspecific genetic variation.

Keywords: Caribbean; Oxford Nanopore Technology; mitogenome; next generation sequencing; phylogeny.

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Conflict of interest statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). The authors comply with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) policies research involving species at risk of extinction, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
An adult Saba Green Iguana on Saba, with characteristic melanistic appearance for this population, especially between the tympanum and eye on the lateral side of the head. Photograph was taken on Saba during 2021, by Matthijs P. van den Burg.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Circular view of complete annotated Saba Green Iguana (Iguana iguana iguana) mitogenome (GenBank accession: OQ076335), with 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNAs, 2 rRNAs, and a control region.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Maximum-likelihood phylogeny of aligned concatenated ribosomal and protein-coding mitochondrial loci (13.926 bp) from the Saba Green Iguana and 15 other Iguaninae taxa, performed in RAxML v. 8.0 (Stamatakis 2014) using the ML thorough bootstrap option with 1,000 replicates and 10 tree search runs. Numbers at nodes represent bootstrap support. GenBank accession numbers follow species names.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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