The reanalysis of biogeography of the Asian tree frog, Rhacophorus (Anura: Rhacophoridae): geographic shifts and climatic change influenced the dispersal process and diversification.

Tao Pan,Jianping Jiang,Xing Kang,Baowei Zhang,Yanan Zhang,Hui Wang,Jun Wu,Jinyun Chen,Dingqi Rao,Lifu Qian

doi:10.7717/peerj.3995

Abstract

Rapid uplifts of the Tibetan Plateau and climate change in Asia are thought to have profoundly modulated the diversification of most of the species distributed throughout Asia. The ranoid tree frog genus Rhacophorus, the largest genus in the Rhacophoridae, is widely distributed in Asia and especially speciose in the areas south and east of the Tibetan Plateau. Here, we infer phylogenetic relationships among species and estimate divergence times, asking whether the spatiotemporal characteristics of diversification within Rhacophorus were related to rapid uplifts of the Tibetan Plateau and concomitant climate change. Phylogenetic analysis recovered distinct lineage structures in Rhacophorus, which indicated a clear distribution pattern from Southeast Asia toward East Asia and India. Molecular dating suggests that the first split within the genus date back to the Middle Oligocene (approx. 30 Ma). The Rhacophorus lineage through time (LTT) showed that there were periods of increased speciation rate: 14–12 Ma and 10–4 Ma. In addition, ancestral area reconstructions supported Southeast Asia as the ancestral area of Rhacophorus. According to the results of molecular dating, ancestral area reconstructions and LTT we think the geographic shifts, the staged rapid rises of the Tibetan Plateau with parallel climatic changes and reinforcement of the Asian monsoons (15 Ma, 8 Ma and 4–3 Ma), possibly prompted a burst of diversification in Rhacophorus.

Highlights

Abiotic factors like climatic and tectonic events, and biotic factors like inter- or intraspecific interactions, competition and predation may be the predominant driving factors during the evolution and diversification of organisms (Antonelli & Sanmartín, 2011; Benton, 2009)
Previous studies have indicated that the diversification of Rhacophoridae was closely linked to the India-Asia collision (57 million years (Ma)–35 Ma) (Li et al, 2013)
Studies have shown that the dynamics of the formation of biodiversity in Southeastern Asia is assumed to be interrelated with many geological events and a unique climatic history

Summary

Introduction

Abiotic factors like climatic and tectonic events, and biotic factors like inter- or intraspecific interactions, competition and predation may be the predominant driving factors during the evolution and diversification of organisms (Antonelli & Sanmartín, 2011; Benton, 2009). These factors can affect the diversification at different temporal and geographical scales (Benton, 2009). Research has focused on the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau, based on a temporal (molecular dating) and spatial (biogeographic) framework, which may have triggered a series of evolutionary changes in different biological groups (Klaus et al, 2016), such as in plants (Gao et al, 2013; Jabbour & Renner, 2012; Tu et al, 2010; Wang et al, 2009), birds (Lei, Qu & Song, 2014; Tietze & Borthakur, 2012; Tietze et al, 2013), mammals (Deng et al, 2011) and amphibians (Che et al, 2010; Guo et al, 2011; Li et al, 2013; Vijayakumar et al, 2016; Zhang et al, 2006)

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