Taxonomic review and phylogenetic study of the Ischnocnema guentheri species series (Anura: Brachycephalidae)

Author(s)

Pedro Paulo Goulart Taucce

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Rio Claro. 2018-06-12.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Instituto de Biociências. Rio Claro
• Defense date: 2018-05-18
• Advisor: Célio Fernando Baptista Haddad; Clarissa Coimbra Canedo

Abstract

The Ischnocnema genus comprises 33 species divided into four series. Among them, the I. guentheri series houses 10 species distributed mainly through the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. This phylogenetic position of this species series, even though it has been robustly tested, has been shown to be quite unstable and some of its species have a very complex taxonomic status. Thus, in the present thesis we make a careful taxonomic review of the members of the I. guentheri series based on bioacoustic, morphological and molecular data, and to test its monophyly as it is known today. We describe two species related to I. oea from the states of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo and two species related to I. venancioi and I. hoehnei from the states of Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro based on morphological, bioacoustic, and molecular data. We also propose a new phylogenetic hypothesis for Ischnocnema using molecular markers, and based on this hypothesis we propose a new arrangement of species series. In addition, high-throughput sequencing coupled with bioacoustic data reveal that, as previously suspected, there are at least six different species being treated under the names I. guentheri or I. henselii. These species, although morphologically indistinguishable from each other, are lineages that show no or very little gene flow. Finally, we construct the mitochondrial genome of five Ischnocnema species from the I. guentheri series using raw high-throughput sequencing data. (AU)