Illegal wildlife trade in Galápagos: molecular tools help the taxonomic identification of confiscated iguanas and guide their rapid repatriation

Four species of iguanas occur in Galápagos. All of them are included in the red list of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. In Ecuador, attempting to remove wildlife from the Galápagos Islands is a serious environmental crime, punishable under Articles of the Ecuadorian Criminal Code. On July 2012, a tourist was arrested in Galápagos while trying to illegally transport four iguanas out of the province. The four iguanas, confiscated by the authorities of Galápagos National Park, needed rapid taxonomic identification and determination of geographic origin for the purposes of repatriation. The phylogenetic analysis of the Cytochrome b sequence data contributed to the unequivocal molecular taxonomic identification of the four confiscated iguanas, each of which belonged to the species Conolophus subcristatus. The genetic data unambiguously indicated that the four confiscated iguanas had been subtracted from the same population, currently distributed in Baltra and Seymour Norte. The use of molecular tools proved crucial for the rapid assessment of the population of origin. Such a rapid assessment was possible because a large genetic database was already available for Galápagos iguanas. It is recommended that genetic programs be developed for the complete genetic characterization of wildlife in Galápagos as well as in other areas of endemism worldwide.