A combination of long term fragmentation and glacial persistence drove the evolutionary history of the Italian wall lizard Podarcis siculus
Background: The current distribution of genetic diversity is the result of a vast array of microevolutionary processes, including short-term demographic and ecological mechanisms and long-term allopatric isolation in response to Quaternary climatic fluctuations. We investigated past processes that drove the population differentiation and spatial genetic distribution of the Italian wall lizard Podarcis siculus by means of sequences of mitochondrial cytb (n = 277 from 115 localities) and nuclear mc1r and ?-fibint7genes (n = 262 and n = 91, respectively) from all its distribution range.