Abstract
The high mountain ranges of Western Europe had a profound effect on the biotic recolonization of Europe from glacial refugia. The Alps present a particularly interesting case because they form an absolute barrier to dispersal for most taxa, obstructing recolonization from multiple refugia in northern Italy. Here, we investigate the effect of the European Alps on the phylogeographic history of the European common frog Rana temporaria. Based on partial cytochrome b and COXI sequences from Switzerland, we find two mitochondrial lineages roughly north and south of the Alpine ridge, with contact zones between them in eastern and western Switzerland. The northern haplogroup falls within the previously identified Western European haplogroup, while the southern haplogroup is unique to Switzerland. We find that the lineages diverged ~110 kya, at approximately the onset of the last glacial glaciation; this indicates that they are from different glacial refugia. Phylogenetic analyses suggest that the northern and southern haplogroups colonized Switzerland via trans‐ and circum‐Alpine routes from at least two separate refugia in northern Italy. Our results illustrate how a complex recolonization history of the central European Alps can arise from the semi‐permeable barrier created by high mountains.
Highlights
High mountain ranges such as the European Alps and Pyrenees were the last to deglaciate in mainland Europe during glacial minima over the last ~700 ky (Darnault et al, 2012; Ehlers et al, 2018)
We describe the phylogeographic history of a cold-tolerant amphibian, the European common frog (Rana temporaria), by densely sampling populations across the Alps in Switzerland
The western haplogroup has higher genetic diversity than the eastern haplogroup and sex chromosome differentiation parallels the distribution of mitochondrial lineages (Phillips et al, 2020), suggesting that R. temporaria recolonized Western Europe from multiple glacial refugia
Summary
We describe the phylogeographic history of a cold-tolerant amphibian, the European common frog (Rana temporaria), by densely sampling populations across the Alps in Switzerland This species is the most widespread anuran in Europe, occurring from northern Italy and Spain to the sub-arctic tundra in Fennoscandia in the north and the Ural mountains in the east. The western haplogroup has higher genetic diversity than the eastern haplogroup and sex chromosome differentiation parallels the distribution of mitochondrial lineages (Phillips et al, 2020), suggesting that R. temporaria recolonized Western Europe from multiple glacial refugia Both Iberia (Teacher et al, 2009) and Italy (Stefani et al, 2012) have been suggested as principal refugia for the western haplogroup. The second ridge is called the northern Alpine ridge, and roughly bisects Switzerland into a northern and southern part
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