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| Dendropsophus goughi Boulenger |
In the Neotropics,
nominal taxa such as the toad Rhinella
margaritifera (Bufonidae), the thin-toed frog Leptodactylus fuscus (Leptodactylidae),
and the tree frog Scinax ruber (Hylidae)
are prominent examples of anuran species once considered to occur across nearly
the entire tropical lowlands of South America. Evidence has accumulated that
many such putatively widespread species could in fact be complexes of cryptic
taxa. However, given limited genetic sampling and the difficulty in reviewing
material from all countries hosting populations, their relationships and
systematics remain in many cases as unclear as they were decades ago.
Dendropsophus minutus (Peters, 1872) is a small hylid frog,
21–28 mm snout-vent length, distributed in Cis-Andean South America, including
the Andean slopes, the Amazon Basin, the Guiana Shield, down to the Atlantic
Forests of southeastern Brazil, with an elevational record from near sea level
up to 2,000 m. Variation in coloration, osteology, advertisement calls and
larval morphology, along with molecular data from limited parts of the species'
distribution suggest the nominal D. minutus might represent a species complex. However,
the sheer size of its supposed geographical range along with nomenclatural and
taxonomic complexity (six junior synonyms) and unresolved relationships in
the D. minutus species
group have so far made these frogs inaccessible to revision.
Gehara et al. (2014)
use D. minutus to
understand to what degree a small-sized, tropical anuran has the potential to
be continentally widespread with limited genetic structure within its range, as
expected for a single species. In addition to conservation concerns, this
question has important implications for South American biogeography in general
and amphibian systematics and evolution in particular. Evidence is accumulating
that body size in amphibians has a positive correlation with range size, but
contrary to this trend many Holarctic amphibians occur with little genetic
substructure across the vast ranges they colonized after the last glaciation, despite
sometimes moderate to small body sizes. Whether such patterns also exist across
vast ranges in tropical regions, with their distinct historical climatic
dynamics, is an open question. Deciphering possible cryptic diversity within
the nominal D. minutus would
also help inform conservation assessments which typically use species'
geographic distributions as criteria for conservation status.
The phylogenetic tree based
on the 16S gene containing all Dendropsophus for
which sequences were available recovered the monophyly of the D. minutus species group. Within
the group, the clade containing samples representing lineages 19–43 received a
maximal posterior probability (1.0) and is defined here as the D. minutus complex, given that
lineage 25 contains samples from the type locality of D. minutus.
Most of the mitochondrial
lineages containing more than one sample received strong nodal support. The
lineages splitting off from basal nodes of the tree (lineages 1–18) are
distributed in the Guiana Shield, and in the Andean region of Peru, Ecuador and
Colombia, with an eastern extralimital clade assembling disjunct localities in
Mato Grosso and Pará.
The remaining lineages
are in general more widely distributed in central and eastern South America
Lineages are largely allopatric but several cases of sympatry were observed.
The uncorrected pairwise distances between lineages for the 16S gene ranged
from 0.7 to 13%, while within-lineage p-distances ranged from 0.0 to 1.8%.
Most of the lineages
(45%) were found in only one or two localities. Fifty per cent of the lineages
were only found in areas smaller than 10 km2, and more than 70% have
known ranges smaller than 10,000 km2. Eight out of the 43 lineages
have a distribution larger than 100,000 km2. Largest range sizes were found in
northeastern Brazil (Caatinga domain; 997,262 km2, lineage 36),
eastern Bolivia and western Brazil (Cerrado, Chaco and Dry Forest domains;
293,321 km2, lineage 33) and the Guiana Shield (269,741 km2,
lineage 2).
Among the D.
minutus species group members external to the D. minutus complex, lineages 1–6
are Guianan, while 7–18 are primarily distributed along the Andean foothills,
and all show well-pronounced molecular differentiation and divergence. Among
lineages 1–6, there is moderate genetic differentiation. Considering mitochondrial
reciprocal monophyly and GMYC results as criteria, and being taxonomically
conservative, one available name, Hyla
goughi Boulenger, 1911 (type locality: Trinidad), should likely be
removed from the synonymy of D.
minutus and allocated to populations comprised by all or some of
lineages 1–6. As a conservative estimate, the authors hypothesize that lineages
7–18 comprise seven distinct species, i.e., five named taxa and two undescribed
species (lineages 9+10 and 11+12).
Data presented herein provide conclusive evidence for a
strong genetic subdivision of the nominal species Dendropsophus minutus as currently understood. Current
taxonomy conservatively assumes a putatively widespread species encompassing a
vast area of South America (from approximately latitude 11.0°N to 35.0°S),
distributed across several biomes. Our results, however, reveal high genetic
diversity within D. minutus that would suggest the existence of
numerous distinct species, leading to an important increase in number of
species. If this hypothesis is confirmed through further studies, the existence
of an increased number of species with decreased range sizes would have
important consequences for the definition of centers of endemism and for
assessing conservation status.
Citation
Gehara M, Crawford AJ, Orrico VGD, Rodríguez A, Lötters S,
et al. (2014) High Levels of Diversity Uncovered in a Widespread Nominal Taxon:
Continental Phylogeography of the Neotropical Tree Frog Dendropsophus
minutus. PLoS
ONE 9(9): e103958. doi:10.1371/
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