Where does diversity come from? Linking geographical patterns of morphological, genetic, and environmental variation in wall lizards

BACKGROUND: Understanding how phenotypic variation scales from individuals, through populations, up to species, and how it relates to genetic and environmental factors, is essential for deciphering the evolutionary mechanisms that drive biodiversity. We used two species of Podarcis wall lizards to test whether phenotypic diversity within and divergence across populations follow concordant patterns, and to examine how phenotypic variation responds to genetic and environmental variability across different hierarchical levels of biological organization, in an explicit geographic framework. RESULTS: We found a general concordance of phenotypic variation across hierarchical levels (i.e. individuals and populations). However, we also found that within-population diversity does not exhibit a coherent geographic structure for most traits, while among-population divergence does, suggesting that different mechanisms may underlie the generation of diversity at these two levels. Furthermore, the association of phenotypic variation with genetic and environmental factors varied extensively between hierarchical levels and across traits, hampering the identification of simple rules to explain what yields diversity. CONCLUSIONS: Our results in some cases comply with general ecological and evolutionary predictions, but in others they are difficult to explain in the geographic framework used, suggesting that habitat characteristics and other regulatory mechanisms may have a more substantial contribution in shaping phenotypic diversity. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12862-018-1237-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.