Morphological and acoustic evidence for hybridisation between two broadly sympatric south-eastern Australian tree frogs Litoria ewingii and L. verreauxii (Anura: Hylidae)

Abstract

The south-eastern Australian tree frogs Litoria ewingii and L. verreauxii are related species that share a broad zone of sympatry. Despite evidence of reproductive character displacement and positive assortative mating in sympatry, a small number of studies have provided inconclusive evidence that occasional hybridisation may occur. We assessed morphological and acoustic divergence between males from two localities where L. ewingii and L. verreauxii occur in sympatry. Several acoustic and morphological traits were found to be divergent between individuals assigned a priori to parental species based on a single acoustic character of the male advertisement call that was previously identified to be diagnostic (pulse number). In contrast, multivariate analysis indicated that at least five adult males identified a priori as putative hybrids (on the basis of intermediate pulse number) were also intermediate in morphology and other aspects of acoustic structure. The concordance of intermediate morphological and acoustic phenotypes supports the hypothesis that despite strong premating isolation, mismating results in at least a small number of hybrid adult males where these species occur in sympatry. This new evidence of hybridisation between L. ewingii and L. verreauxii underlines that there remains much to learn about this model system for understanding hybrid zone dynamics.