Phylogeography – the study of the geographical genetic structure within species or groups of closely related species – was until recently typically based on one or a few genes. Nowadays, many genes can be consulted. This allows us to better address questions about taxonomy, species relationships and hybridization. We adapted the Triturus Ion Torrent protocol and took another look at the banded newts, using two orders of magnitude more markers than before.

If you were not convinced already: we can now be very confident that there are three species of banded newt. The Anatolian and Caucasian banded newts appear to be more closely related to each other than to the southern banded newt, but support is not great. These two newt species probably meet in nature and are known to hybridize under artificial conditions. Although the putative hybrid zone remains unsampled, we show that the geographical extent of gene flow between the two must be limited – in sharp contrast to Triturus newts in the region! Another interesting aspect is that there are distinct genetic groups within banded newt species. So, while there we have learned a lot about banded newts the last few years, there are also still some cool outstanding questions (…fortunately!).

Reference: van Riemsdijk, I. Arntzen, J.W., Babik, W., Bogaerts, S., Franzen, M., Kalaentzis, K., Litvinchuk, S.N., Olgun, K. Wijnands, J.W.P.M., Wielstra, B. (2022). Next-generation phylogeography of the banded newts (Ommatotriton): a phylogenetic hypothesis for three ancient species with geographically restricted interspecific gene flow and deep intraspecific genetic structure. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 167: 107361.

_{This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 655487) and the ‘Nederlandse organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek’ (NWO Open Programme 824.14.014).}