• Tuscan Arcipelago
• biogeography
• lizards
• Podarcis

Islands are fascinating ecosystems in many respects, ecological, climatic and genetic. Organisms that live on islands are often biologically and genetically different from their mainland counterparts. Lizards in particular are considered as good model organisms for the insular biogeography studies. In this study we question the taxonomic status of the populations of two different species of wall lizards that populate the Tuscan archipelago. In particular we analysed the morphological differences among the island and continental populations, and evaluating if the morphological differences mirror the genetic differences. We sampled lizards from the main six islands of the Archipelago, collecting morphological traits. The populations of both species of the Tuscan Archipelago are highly heterogeneous, the morphological traits are significantly different among the island populations. Furthermore, the morphological differences among the island populations are partially inconsistent with genetic data. Our results suggest that morphology, once used to distinguish various subspecies, has little validity for this purpose, especially for highly variable species such as lizards. Furthermore, with this study we have new morphological data on island populations of lizards that are still little studied.