The African colubrid snake genus Crotaphopeltis currently comprises six species and occurs throughout sub‐Saharan Africa. The most widespread of these, Crotaphopeltis hotamboeia, inhabits most biomes, aside from rainforest and hyper‐arid regions, and its catholic niche has presumably facilitated substantial gene flow. Despite this, the geographical range is large enough that ecological or physical barriers might exist, facilitating allopatric diversification. In contrast, most of the other species are habitat specialists with limited distributions (e.g., Crotaphopeltis tornieri) and would be expected to show strong genetic structure. We therefore examined species boundaries within Crotaphopeltis in a phylogenetic context using five markers (16S, cyt b, ND4, c‐mos, and RAG‐1) for four of the six species. Species delimitation methods included two coalescent‐based and one barcoding approach. Widespread geographical sampling of C. hotamboeia allowed examination of genetic structuring across its range. The species status of Crotaphopeltis barotseensis, C. degeni, and C. hotamboeia was confirmed, whereas the Afromontane species C. tornieri comprised two candidate species. Crotaphopeltis hotamboeia did not show cryptic speciation, although its phylogeographic structure corresponded with the spatiotemporal pattern of the African savanna. Our results show how the heterogeneous African environment could influence genetic partitioning of habitat specialist and generalist species at broad geographical scales.

中文翻译：

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非洲先驱蛇Crotaphopeltis显示出种群结构，表明森林专家普遍存在通才，但遗传差异深远

非洲colubrid蛇属Crotaphopeltis目前包括六个物种，遍布整个撒哈拉以南非洲。除热带雨林和高干旱地区外，其中最普遍的是Crotaphopeltis hotamboeia，栖息于大多数生物群落中，其天主教生态位大概促进了基因的大量流动。尽管如此，地理范围足够大，以至于可能存在生态或物理障碍，从而促进了异源性多样化。相比之下，其他大多数物种都是栖息地专家，分布有限（例如，Crotaphopeltis tornieri），并且有望显示出强大的遗传结构。因此，我们检查了Crotaphopeltis内的物种边界在系统发育背景下，对六个物种中的四个使用了五个标记（16S，cyt b，ND4，c-mos和RAG-1）。物种定界方法包括两种基于合并的方法和一种条形码方法。炭疽热衣藻的广泛地理采样允许检查其范围内的遗传结构。种的地位Crotaphopeltis barotseensis，C. degeni和C. hotamboeia证实，而Afromontane种C. tornieri由两个候选品种。嗜热菌尽管其谱系结构与非洲大草原的时空模式相对应，但并未显示出隐秘的物种形态。我们的结果表明，非洲的异质环境如何在广泛的地理范围内影响栖息地专家和通才物种的遗传划分。