Testing hypotheses of diversification in Panamanian frogs and freshwater fishes using hierarchical approximate Bayesian computation with model averaging

Department of Biology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, United States
Departamento de Zoologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, DF, Brazil
The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, United States
Biology Department, City College of New York, New York, NY, United States
Division of Invertebrate Zoology, The American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, United States
Department of Biology, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, United States
Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, United States
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.26623v1
Subject Areas
Biodiversity, Biogeography, Bioinformatics
Keywords
approximate Bayesian computation, Central America, comparative phylogeography, freshwater fishes, frogs, Isthmus of Panama
Copyright
© 2018 Bagley et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Bagley JC, Hickerson MJ, Johnson JB. 2018. Testing hypotheses of diversification in Panamanian frogs and freshwater fishes using hierarchical approximate Bayesian computation with model averaging. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26623v1

Abstract

Most Neotropical frog and freshwater fish species sampled to date show phylogeographic breaks along the Pacific coast of the Isthmus of Panama, with lineages in Costa Rica and western Panama isolated from central Panama. We examine temporal patterns of diversification of taxa across this ‘western Panama isthmus’ (WPI) break to test hypotheses about the origin of species geographical distributions and genetic structuring in this region. We tested for synchronous diversification of four codistributed frog taxon-pairs and three fish taxon-pairs sharing the WPI break using hierarchical approximate Bayesian computation with model averaging based on mitochondrial DNA sequences. We also estimated lineage divergence times using full-Bayesian models. Several of our results supported synchronous divergences within the frog and freshwater fish assemblages; however, Bayes factor support was equivocal for or against synchronous or asynchronous diversification. Nevertheless, we infer that frog populations were likely isolated by one or multiple Pliocene–Pleistocene events more recently than predicted by previous models, while fish genetic diversity was structured by Pleistocene events. By integrating our results with external information from geology and elevational sea level modeling, we discuss the implications of our findings for understanding the biogeographical scenario of the diversification of Panamanian frogs and fishes. Consistent with the ‘Bermingham/Martin model’ (Mol. Ecol. 1998, 7: 499-517), we conclude that the regional fish assemblage was fractured by processes shaping isthmian landscapes during the Pleistocene glaciations, including drainage basin isolation during lowered sea levels.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.

Supplemental Information

Supplementary methods and results

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.26623v1/supp-1

GenBank numbers and locality data for samples used in this study

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.26623v1/supp-2

BEAST MCC time trees for all seven focal species/lineages

Gray bars represent the upper and lower 95% highest posterior density (HPD) estimates of divergence times at each node and correspond to x-axis scale bars in units of millions of years ago (Ma). Yellow portions of node bars extend beyond x-axis limits and thus represent scale-less, truncated estimates; for upper 95% HPD ends of the truncated bars, and for nodes corresponding to the WPI break, geometric mean divergence time estimate values are given. Tip labels are colored green (west of the WPI break) or purple (east of the WPI break) consistent with the colors of sampling locations in Fig. 2.

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.26623v1/supp-3

Graphical checks on prior distributions listed in Table 1 based on principal components analysis

Red dots show the observed data for (A) frogs and (B) freshwater fishes projected into the principal components space.

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.26623v1/supp-4

GIS sea-level model for lower Central America

This map is based on a 250 m Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and shows predicted eustatic sea levels in the study area potentially resulting from highstands of +50 m (light blue), +100 m (blue), and +250 m (dark blue) above present sea level (relative to current elevation).

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.26623v1/supp-5