Integrative taxonomic reassessment of Odontophrynus populations in Argentina and phylogenetic relationships within Odontophrynidae (Anura)

Adolfo Ludovico Martino; Jonas Maximilian Dehling; Ulrich Sinsch

doi:10.7287/peerj.preprints.27273v1

Integrative taxonomic reassessment of Odontophrynus populations in Argentina and phylogenetic relationships within Odontophrynidae (Anura)

Adolfo Ludovico Martino¹, Jonas Maximilian Dehling², Ulrich Sinsch ²

1 Department of Ecology, National University of Rio Cuarto, Rio Cuarto, Argentina

2 Department of Biology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Koblenz, Germany

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.27273v1

Published: 2018-10-11
Accepted: 2018-10-11

Subject Areas: Biodiversity, Evolutionary Studies, Taxonomy, Zoology
Keywords: Integrative taxonomy, Allozymes, Advertisement call, Species delimitation, Macrogenioglottus, Odontophrynus, Morphometry, 16S rRNA sequences, Proceratophrys

Copyright: © 2018 Martino 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: Martino AL, Dehling JM, Sinsch U. 2018. Integrative taxonomic reassessment of Odontophrynus populations in Argentina and phylogenetic relationships within Odontophrynidae (Anura) PeerJ Preprints 6:e27273v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27273v1

Abstract

Amphibians are the most vulnerable vertebrates to biodiversity loss mediated by habitat destruction, climate change and diseases. Informed conservation management requires to improve the taxonomy of anurans to assess reliably the species´ geographic range. In this study, we applied robust integrative taxonomic methods combining genetic (allozymes, mitochondrial 16S gene), morphological and behavioural data (advertisement call structure) to delimit species of the genus Odontophrynus sampled from throughout their centre of diversity in Argentina. The combined evidence used to assess the validity of the nominal taxa demonstrates one case of cryptic diversity and another of overestimation of species richness. The tetraploid populations referred to as O. americanus comprise at least two species. In contrast, O. achalensis and O. barrioi represent junior synonyms of the phenotypically plastic species O. occidentalis. We conclude that each of the four species occurring in Argentina possesses networks of populations in medium to large areas. Red list classification is currently “least concern”. We also propose a phylogenetic hypothesis for the genus and associated genera Macrogenioglottus and Proceratophrys (Odontophrynidae) and discuss its implications on advertisement call evolution.