NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES: A dataset of occurrence and abundance of freshwater fishes in the Neotropics.

The Neotropical region hosts 4225 freshwater fish species, ranking first among the world's most diverse regions for freshwater fishes. Our NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES data set is the first to produce a large-scale Neotropical freshwater fish inventory, covering the entire Neotropical region from Mexico and the Caribbean in the north to the southern limits in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay. We compiled 185,787 distribution records, with unique georeferenced coordinates, for the 4225 species, represented by occurrence and abundance data.

Geography and past climate changes have shaped the evolution of a widespread lizard from the Chilean hotspot.

The complex orogenic history and structure of Southern South America, coupled with Pleistocene glacial cycles, have generated paleoclimatic and environmental changes that influenced the spatial distribution and genetic composition of natural populations. Despite the increased number of phylogeographic studies in this region and given the frequent idiosyncratic phylogeographic patterns, there is still the need to focus research especially on species that are currently distributed within a wide range of bioclimatic regimes, and that historically have been subject to contrasting scenarios. Liolaemus tenuis is a widely distributed lizard species inhabiting latitudinally in almost 1000km through central and southern Chile.

Lizards on ice: evidence for multiple refugia in Liolaemus pictus (Liolaemidae) during the last glacial maximum in the Southern Andean beech forests.

Historical climate changes and orogenesis are two important factors that have shaped intraspecific biodiversity patterns worldwide. Although southern South America has experienced such complex events, there is a paucity of studies examining the effects on intraspecific diversification in this part of the world. Liolaemus pictus is the southernmost distributed lizard in the Chilean temperate forest, whose genetic structure has likely been influenced by Pleistocene glaciations.