Niche Divergence at Intraspecific Level in the Hyrcanian Wood Frog, Rana pseudodalmatina: A Phylogenetic, Climatic, and Environmental Survey

Somaye Vaissi,Sahar Rezaei

doi:10.3389/fevo.2022.774481

Somaye Vaissi, Sahar Rezaei

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2022.774481

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Abstract

The role of ecological niche divergence in lineage speciation has recently stimulated the interest of evolutionary biologists and ecologists. Phylogenetic analysis has revealed that the Hyrcanian wood frog,Rana pseudodalmatina, has diverged into two western and eastern regional clades (WRC and ERC) within the Hyrcanian forest. The goal of this study was to investigate whether the ecological niches of WRC and ERC are conserved or diverged, as well as to figure out what variables promote niche conservatism or divergence. For this purpose, the maximum entropy model was employed to assess environmental niche modeling in geographical (G) space utilizing climatic and macro-environmental data. The niche overlap, equivalency, and similarity tests based on PCAenvanalyses were used to assess niche divergence or conservatism in environmental (E) space. The findings strongly support the hypothesis that WRC and ERC have undergone substantial niche divergence and are constrained by a unique set of climatic and macro-environmental conditions. This study by ecological niche comparisons based on phylogenetic data provides new insights into the exploration of species diversification processes in the Hyrcanian forests.

Highlights

IntroductionEcological factors have received increasing attention as a driver of lineage diversification and speciation (e.g., Wiens et al, 2010; Peterson, 2011; Broennimann et al, 2012; Zink, 2014; Hu et al, 2016; Fei et al, 2017; Wang et al, 2017; Gutiérrez-Ortega et al, 2020; Wei et al, 2020; Benício et al, 2021; Engler et al, 2021; Yin et al, 2021)
Several studies have focused on the genetic structure, phylogeny, and habitat suitability of the Hyrcanian wood frog, R. pseudodalmatina (Najibzadeh et al, 2017, 2018, 2021; Amiri et al, 2021; Kidov and Litvinchuk, 2021)
Niche divergence or conservatism and its relationship to lineage diversification were explored based on recent phylogeographic understanding (Najibzadeh et al, 2018, 2021; Amiri et al, 2021)

Summary

Introduction

Ecological factors have received increasing attention as a driver of lineage diversification and speciation (e.g., Wiens et al, 2010; Peterson, 2011; Broennimann et al, 2012; Zink, 2014; Hu et al, 2016; Fei et al, 2017; Wang et al, 2017; Gutiérrez-Ortega et al, 2020; Wei et al, 2020; Benício et al, 2021; Engler et al, 2021; Yin et al, 2021) In this debate, one of the main questions is whether newly developed species or clades exhibit signs of niche conservatism or divergence (Kozak and Wiens, 2006; Peterson, 2011; Wang et al, 2017; Zhu et al, 2020; Grossman, 2021; Meirmans, 2021; Van Dijk et al, 2021). Despite the fact that recent studies have presented ecological niche metrics clearly and statistically

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