Data from: How lizards survived blizzards: phylogeography of the Liolaemus lineomaculatus group (Liolaemidae) reveals multiple breaks and refugia in southern Patagonia, and their concordance with other co-distributed taxa

Patagonia was shaped by a complex geological history, including the Miocene uplift of the Andes, followed by volcanism, marine introgressions, and extreme climatic oscillations during Pleistocene glaciation–deglaciation cycles. The distributional patterns and phylogenetic relationships of southern patagonian animals and plants were affected in different ways, and those imprints are reflected in the seven phylogeographic breaks and eight refugia that have been previously proposed. In this study we estimated time-calibrated phylogenetic/phylogeographic patterns in lizards of the Liolaemus lineomaculatus group, and related them to historical Miocene-to-Pleistocene events of Patagonia and the previously proposed phylogeographic patterns. Individuals from 51 localities were sequenced for the mitochondrial marker (cyt-b) and a sub-sample of individuals from each mitochondrial lineage was sequenced for one nuclear (LDA12D) and one slow evolving mitochondrial gene (12S). Our analyses revealed strong phylogeographic structure among lineages and, in most cases, no signal of population changes through time. The lineomaculatus group is composed of three strongly supported clades (lineomaculatus, hatcheri and kolengh+silvanae), and divergence estimates suggested their origins associated with the oldest known Patagonian glaciation (7-5 Ma); subsequent diversification within the lineomaculatus clade coincided with the large Pliocene glaciations (~3.5 Ma). The lineomaculatus clade includes nine strongly structured genetically and geographically lineages and five of them are interpreted candidate species. Our findings suggest that some Liolaemus lineages have persisted in situ in multiple refugia through several glaciation-deglaciation cycles in southern Patagonia without demographic fluctuations. We also provide qualitative evidence of some shared phylogeographic breaks and refugia among plants, rodents, and lizards.