The West Indian Iguanas (Cyclura) are among the most remarkable of the Caribbean herpetofaunal assemblage and are, concomitantly, one of the most threatened vertebrate taxa in the West Indies. We generated genome-scale ultraconserved elements data to reevaluate classical West Indian iguana taxonomy and conducted multiple targeted species delimitation analyses to comprehensively test phylogenetic species concepts in this group. We deployed a combination of Bayesian and maximum likelihood approaches to clarify species limits in this group, but focused on approaches that proceed under the multispecies coalescent model. Our results corroborate prior studies in demonstrating that alternative delimitation models in BPP are highly sensitive to prior parameters, as high ϴ values tend to favor splitting species, while low ϴ values tend to favor lumping species. Importantly, our study provides novel species-level taxonomy for these endangered taxa with major conservation implications.
