Abstract
Herein we present new occurrences of sites of Dendropsophus minusculus in Brazil adding information about reproductive biology and colour patterns of the species. Such information is fundamental for characterising the species that we believe has been neglected due to its morphological similarity with other congeneric species. Dendropsophus minusculus may be found in different morphoclimatic domains, being one of the most generalist species of the genus in this aspect. The species plasticity is not restricted to its occurrence, but also related to aspects of its reproductive biology, and we hypothesised that the latter feature could explain the wide geographical range of the species. We highlight the importance of further in-depth studies and the use of D. minusculus as a model to understand the historical events responsible for the current geographical distribution of the morphoclimatic domains in Brazil.
Highlights
The taxonomy of species assigned to the Dendropsophus microcephalus group is complex and several reasons have contributed to the current taxonomical problems
Geographic distribution and habitat use we present the first records of Dendropsophus minusculus for the Brazilian states of Bahia, Ceará, Maranhão, Piauí, and Roraima (Figure 1) as well as for the Caatinga, Cerrado, and Atlantic Rainforest domains
Dendropsophus minusculus has been reported occurring in Brazil since the 80s
Summary
Dendropsophus minusculus (Rivero, 1971) is a smallsized hylid (sensu Duellman, 1970) like its specific epithet suggests, reaching up to 24 mm SVL (females) (Langone and Basso, 1987; Duellman, 1997) and assigned to the species group of D. microcephalus (Cope, 1886) (sensu Faivovich et al, 2005), a group that includes 38 species with unresolved phylogenetic relationships (Faivovich et al, 2005; Köhler et al, 2005; Moravec et al, 2006; 2008; Fouquet et al, 2011).The taxonomy of species assigned to the Dendropsophus microcephalus group is complex and several reasons have contributed to the current taxonomical problems.
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Schedule a callMore From: Brazilian journal of biology = Revista brasleira de biologia
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