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Abstract
Genetic data in studies of systematics of Amazonian amphibians frequently reveal that purportedly widespread single species in reality comprise species complexes. This means that real species richness may be significantly higher than current estimates. Here we combine genetic, morphological, and bioacoustic data to assess the phylogenetic relationships and species boundaries of two Amazonian species of the Dendropsophus leucophyllatus species group: D. leucophyllatus and D. triangulum. Our results uncovered the existence of five confirmed and four unconfirmed candidate species. Among the confirmed candidate species, three have available names: Dendropsophus leucophyllatus, Dendropsophus triangulum, and Dendropsophus reticulatus, this last being removed from the synonymy of D. triangulum. A neotype of D. leucophyllatus is designated. We describe the remaining two confirmed candidate species, one from Bolivia and another from Peru. All confirmed candidate species are morphologically distinct and have much smaller geographic ranges than those previously reported for D. leucophyllatus and D. triangulum sensu lato. Dendropsophus leucophyllatus sensu stricto occurs in the Guianan region. Dendropsophus reticulatus comb. nov. corresponds to populations in the Amazon basin of Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru previously referred to as D. triangulum. Dendropsophus triangulum sensu stricto is the most widely distributed species; it occurs in Amazonian Ecuador, Peru and Brazil, reaching the state of Pará. We provide accounts for all described species including an assessment of their conservation status.
Highlights
The destruction and alteration of natural areas is resulting in unprecedented rates of extinctions [1]
The Dendropsophus leucophyllatus species group is currently comprised of 10 nominal species [6,7,8] distributed in eastern Central America and Chocoregion: Dendropsophus ebraccatus (Cope, 1874); Amazonia: D. bifurcus (Andersson, 1945), D. leucophyllatus (Beireis, 1783), D. manonegra Rivera-Correa and Orrico, 2013, D. rossalleni (Goin, 1957), D. salli Jungfer et al, 2010, D. sarayacuensis (Shreve, 1935), and D. triangulum (Gunther, 1869); and Atlantic forest: D. anceps (Lutz, 1929) and D. elegans (Wied-Neuwied, 1824)
The phylogenetic relationships recovered from the analysis of the mitochondrial DNA sequences (Fig 1) were consistent with those reported by Rivera-Correa and Orrico [8] for the D. leucophyllatus group
Summary
The destruction and alteration of natural areas is resulting in unprecedented rates of extinctions [1]. Because many species remain undescribed, efforts to catalog and quantify biodiversity elements must be prioritized [2]. This is needed in widespread taxa with pervasive taxonomic problems. The Dendropsophus leucophyllatus species group is currently comprised of 10 nominal species [6,7,8] distributed in eastern Central America and Chocoregion: Dendropsophus ebraccatus (Cope, 1874); Amazonia: D. bifurcus (Andersson, 1945), D. leucophyllatus (Beireis, 1783), D. manonegra Rivera-Correa and Orrico, 2013, D. rossalleni (Goin, 1957), D. salli Jungfer et al, 2010, D. sarayacuensis (Shreve, 1935), and D. triangulum (Gunther, 1869); and Atlantic forest: D. anceps (Lutz, 1929) and D. elegans (Wied-Neuwied, 1824). The first taxonomic review of this group was based on morphological characters [9], and subsequently refined with molecular analysis [3,7,8,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18], which were sometimes combined with bioacoustic data [4,19]
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