Abstract
Buergeria japonica is a widely distributed treefrog occurring from Ryukyu Archipelago to Taiwan. Across this wide distributional range, we combined molecular, acoustic, morphological, and behavioral characters to clarify the taxonomic status among these insular populations. Genetic differentiation in mitochondrial sequences indicated an over 16% divergence among two deeply divergent clades: Japanese clade distributes in Ryukyu Archipelago and northwestern drainages of Taiwan, while Taiwanese clade distributes in the remaining drainages on Taiwan. The Taiwanese clade can be distinguished from the nominative species not only by molecular and morphological differences, but also distinguishable by considerable acoustic differentiation, which is extraordinarily noticeable for an additional type of long call that never recorded from Japanese clade. The two clades form a parapatric distribution pattern with narrow contact zones both in western and eastern Taiwan. Playback experiments indicated that male frogs show significantly stronger defensiveness against conspecific calls rather than heterospecific calls, indicating that these signals play a crucial role in species recognition. Here we describe the Taiwanese clade as a new species; the behavioral response and the magnitude of gene flow across their contact zones are especially worth for detailed studies.
Highlights
The rapid development of molecular techniques has improved our ability to uncover cryptic species and provided evidences on uncovered biodiversity [1, 2]
We evaluated the taxonomic status of Japanese stream treefrog by a combination of molecular, acoustic, morphological, and behavioral characters
In order to standardize the impact of external environments, we summarized air temperature and humidity by principal component analysis (PCA), chose PC1 as the “ambient factor”
Summary
The rapid development of molecular techniques has improved our ability to uncover cryptic species and provided evidences on uncovered biodiversity [1, 2]. Delimitating species based solely on molecular evidence is insufficient in cryptic species diagnosis [3, 4, 5]. Acoustic differentiation and behavioral response of cryptic treefrogs by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan given to S.-M. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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