A male pygmy marbled newt (left) and a male marbled newt. Pictures by Michael Fahrbach.

Although my work is heavily focused on crested newts, there are two marbled newt species in the genus Triturus as well. In a new paper out in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, led by my former MSc student Christos Kazilas, we present a ‘next-generation phylogeography’ of marbled newts. There is remarkable little gene flow between the two marbled newt species compared to crested newts. This finding strongly supports the species status of the two marbled newts – in case anyone was still in doubt. Furthermore, both marbled newt species are composed of two genetically distinct groups. We could expose these intricate patterns thanks to the massive amount of DNA data that is easily generated with the Triturus sequence capture protocol.

Reference: Kazilas, C., Dufresnes, C., France, J., Martínez-Solano, Í., Kalaentzis, K., de Visser, M.C., Arntzen, J.W., Wielstra, B. (2024). Spatial genetic structure in European marbled newts revealed with target enrichment by sequence capture. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 194: 108043.