A new large canopy-dwelling species of Phyllodytes Wagler, 1930 (Anura, Hylidae) from the Atlantic Forest of the state of Bahia, Northeastern Brazil.

Iuri R Dias,Juliana Zina,Gabriel Novaes-E-Fagundes,Antonio Mollo Neto,Caroline Garcia,Miguel Trefaut Rodrigues,Mirco Solé,Renato Sousa Recoder,Francisco Dal Vechio

doi:10.7717/peerj.8642

Abstract

The known diversity of treefrogs of the genus Phyllodytes has rapidly increased in recent years, currently comprising 14 species. Recent field work in the Atlantic Rainforest of the state of Bahia lead to the discovery of a new large species of Phyllodytes which is herein described based on multiple evidence including morphological, acoustical and genetic data. Phyllodytes sp. nov. is one of the largest species within the genus and presents immaculate yellowish dorsum and limbs. The advertisement call of the species is composed of 7–31 notes (half pulsed/pulsatile-half harmonic) with frequency-modulated harmonics. Phyllodytes sp. nov. has a karyotype of 2n = 22 chromosomes, as also found in other species of the genus. Genetic distance values of the 16S mitochondrial rRNA among Phyllodytes sp. nov. and its congeners range between 6.4 to 10.2%. The description of another new species for this state reinforces the need for further taxonomic work with Phyllodytes in this region that has been revealed as a priority area for research and conservation of this genus.

Highlights

The genus Phyllodytes Wagler, 1830 assembles 14 species, distributed mainly throughout the morphoclimatic domain of the Atlantic Forest, most of them with occurrence in the northeast of Brazil (Orrico, Dias & Marciano-Jr, 2018; Frost, 2019;)
Generic placement.— The new species can be allocated to the genus Phyllodytes by the presence of odontoids in the mandible and phylogenetic reconstructions indicate close relationship to other species in this genus supporting this placement
Etymology.— The specific epithet is an adjective from Latin meaning ‘‘great’’ or ‘‘large’’ (Lewis & Short, 1891), and refers to the large size of the adult males collected from this species, which are among the largest known in the genus

Summary

Introduction

The genus Phyllodytes Wagler, 1830 assembles 14 species, distributed mainly throughout the morphoclimatic domain of the Atlantic Forest, most of them with occurrence in the northeast of Brazil (Orrico, Dias & Marciano-Jr, 2018; Frost, 2019;). Some species of Phyllodytes can use terrestrial bromeliads (Ferreira, Schineider & Teixeira, 2012; Cunha & Napoli, 2016), most calling males are heard from bromeliads in the forest canopy, hampering the sampling of representatives of this genus. This peculiar life history trait may explain the scarcity of studies dealing with its taxonomy, How to cite this article Dias IR, Novaes-e-Fagundes G, Neto AM, Zina J, Garcia C, Recoder RS, Vechio FD, Rodrigues MT, Solé M. This scenario is changing due to the greater attention that the genus has received recently, with half of the species within the genus (i.e., seven species) having been described in the last 15 years (Frost, 2019)

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