David V. Ho Peter Baumann Ian J. Wang H. Bradley Shaffer Robert N. Fisher Levi N. Gray Trevor J. Krabbenhoft Robert E. Espinoza Merly Escalona Erin Toffelmier Ruta Sahasrabudhe Oanh Nguyen Colin W. Fairbairn Eric Beraut Robert C. Thomson Anthony J. Barley 2025 <p><span id="_mce_caret" data-mce-bogus="1" data-mce-type="format-caret"><span>The transition from small genetic to genome-scale datasets for studying biodiversity has revealed that genetic exchange through introgressive hybridization is a widespread phenomenon in nature. Despite this, a lack of high-quality reference genomes for most non-model species limits our understanding of the impact of this process for many taxonomic groups. This restricts the range of insights that genomic tools can provide for conservation biologists, who often hope to employ genomic datasets to accurately identify historically isolated lineages to protect and to predict their evolutionary fate in the face of environmental change. Tiger whiptail lizards (</span><i>Aspidoscelis tigris</i><span>&nbsp;complex) are an abundant and important ecological component of ecosystems across the southwestern United States. In this study, we assembled and annotated a chromosome-level reference genome for&nbsp;</span><i>A. t. stejnegeri</i><span>&nbsp;from coastal California. We then used this reference genome to reconstruct patterns of speciation and admixture within the larger species complex, finding evidence that gene flow is widespread both geographically and across the genome.</span></span></p> application/pdf 10.1093/gbe/evaf218 en Oxford Academic Speciation genomics in the tiger whiptail lizards (<i>Aspidoscelis tigris</i> complex) article