Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
Responsive image
Issue: Vol. 2391 No. 1: 8 Mar. 2010
Type: Articles
Published: 2010-03-08
DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.2391.1.2
Page range: 33–46
Abstract views: 47
PDF downloaded: 2

Taxonomic re-assessment of the Australian and New Guinean green-eyed treefrogs Litoria eucnemis, L. genimaculata and L. serrata (Anura: Hylidae)

South Australian Museum, North Terrace, Adelaide, 5000, Australia Conservation International, P.O. Box 1024, Atherton, Queensland 4883, Australia
Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Canberra, 0200, Australia
School of Integrative Biology, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, 4072, Qld, Australia Department of Zoology, University of the Free State, Private Bag X13, Phuthaditjhaba, 9866, South Africa
Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage, Wet Tropics District Office, P.O. Box 834, Atherton, Australia, 4883. Email:
South Australian Museum, North Terrace, Adelaide, 5000, Australia Conservation International, P.O. Box 1024, Atherton, Queensland 4883, Australia Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity, University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5005
Amphibia Allozyme electrophoresis advertisement call Anura Australia Hylidae Indonesia Litoria mitochondrial DNA New Guinea taxonomy

Abstract

The green-eyed treefrogs (Litoria eucnemis species-group) are found throughout New Guinea and some of its offshore islands, and in two geographically separated regions in north-eastern Queensland, Australia. We examine the genetic relationships among populations of the complex from across its range and find that populations fall into two major lineages: 1) specimens referable to L. genimaculata from New Guinea and its offshore islands, and L. exophthalmia, and 2) samples referable to L. eucnemis from New Guinea and northern Cape York, Australia, and two lineages from the Wet Tropics of north-eastern Australia that are currently assigned to L. genimaculata. Based on our molecular genetic analyses, morphological assessment of new collections and re-examination of type material, we retain L. eucnemis as currently recognised for northern Cape York populations but resurrect the name L. serrata for the Wet Tropics populations. The degree of reproductive isolation between the two Wet Tropics lineages is being studied currently and so at this point we refer both to L. serrata. The degree of genetic variation observed in L. genimaculata across New Guinea locations and possible paraphyly with L. exophthalmia suggest the presence of additional undescribed species. Reexamination of type material and collection of new specimens, allow us to reassess the status of several other names currently synonymised with L. eucnemis and L. genimaculata. Our observations support the present synonymy of Hyla rhacophorus with L. eucnemis and we remove Nyctimystes loveridgei from the synonymy of L. genimaculata and place it in the synonymy of L. eucnemis.

References

  1. Andersson, K. (1916) Results of Dr E Mjoberg's Swedish scientific expeditions to Australia 1910-1913. 9. Batrachians from Queensland. Kungliga Svenska Vetenskapsakademiens Akademiens Handlingar, 52, 1–20.

    Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. & Edwards, A.W.F. (1967) Phylogenetic analysis: models and estimation procedures. Evolution, 32, 550–570.

    Condit, J. M. (1964) A list of the types of hylid frogs in the collection of the British Museum (Natural History). Journal of the Ohio Herpetological Society, 4, 89–98.

    Donnellan, S.C., Hutchison, M. N. & Saint, K.M. (1999) Molecular evidence for the phylogeny of Australian gekkonoid lizards. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 67, 97–118.

    Felsenstein, J. (1993) PHYLIP — Phylogeny Inference Package Version 3.5c. Available from http://evolution.genetics.washington.edu/phylip.html. (accessed 14 October 2009)

    Frost, D. R. (2009) Amphibian Species of the World: an online reference. Version 5.3 (12 February, 2009). Available from http://research.amnh.org/herpetology/amphibia/ American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA. (accessed 14 October 2009)

    Frost, D. R., Grant, T., Faivovich, J., Bain, R., Haas, A., Haddad, C. F. B., de SA, R. O., Channing, A., Wilkinson, M., Donnellan, S. C., Raxworthy, C., Campbell, J. A., Blotto, B. L., Moler, P., Drewes, R., Nussbaum, R. A., Lynch, J. D., Green, D. & Wheeler, W. (2006) The amphibian tree of life. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 297, 370 pages.

    Hickson, R. E., Simon, C., Cooper, A., Spicer, G. S., Sullivan, J. & Penny, D. (1996) Conserved sequence motifs, alignment, and secondary structure for the third domain of animal 12S rRNA. Molecular Biology Evolution, 13, 150–169.

    Hillis, D. M. & Bull, J. J. (1993) An empirical test of bootstrapping as a method for assessing confidence in phylogenetic analysis. Systematic Biology, 42, 182–192.

    Horst, R. (1883) On new and little-known frogs of the Malayan archipelago. In: H, Schelegel (Ed), Notes from the Leyden Museum Vol. V. EJ Brill, Leyden, pp. 235-44.

    Hoskin, C. J. (2007) Description, biology and conservation of a new species of Australian treefrog (Amphibia: Anura: Hylidae: Litoria) and an assessment of the remaining populations of Litoria genimaculata Horst, 1883: systematic and conservation implications of an unusual speciation event. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 91, 549–63.

    Hoskin, C. J, Higgie, M., McDonald, K. R. & Moritz, C. (2005) Reinforcement drives rapid allopatric speciation. Nature, 437, 1353–6.

    Huelsenbeck, J.P. & Ronquist, F. (2001) MRBAYES: Bayesian inference of phylogeny. Bioinformatics, 17, 754–5.

    Kjer, K. (1995) Use of rRNA secondary structure in phylogenetic studies to identify homologous positions: an example of alignment and data presentation from the frogs. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 4, 314–30.

    Kjer, K. (1997) Conserved primary and secondary structural motifs of amphibian 12S rRNA, domain III. Journal of Herpetology, 31, 599–604.

    Kocher, T. D., Thomas, W. K., Meyer, A., Edwards, S. V., Paabo, S. F., Villablanca, F. X. & Wilson, A. C. (1989) Dynamics of mitochondrial DNA evolution in animals: Amplification and sequencing with conserved primers. Proceedings of the National Academy Science USA, 86, 6196–6200.

    Lonnberg, E. (1900) Reptiles and batrachians collected in German New Guinea by the late Dr. Erik Nyman. Annals of the Magazine of Natural History Series 7, 6, 574–582.

    McDonald, K. R. (1997) A new stream-dwelling Litoria from the Melville Range, Queensland, Australia. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, 42, 307–9.

    Menzies, J. I. (2006) Frogs of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Pensoft, Sofia, 345pp.

    Miracle, M. E. G., van den Hoeck Ostende, L. W. & Arntzen, J. W. (2007) Type specimens of amphibians in the National Museum of Natural history, Leiden, The Netherlands. Zootaxa, 1482, 25–68.

    Murphy, R. W., Sites, J. W., Buth, D. G. & Haufler, C. H. (1996) Proteins I: Isozyme Electrophoresis. In: Hillis D., Moritz, C. & Mable, B. (Eds.), Molecular Systematics. Sinauer, Sunderland, Massachusetts, pp. 51–120.

    Neill, W. T. (1954) A new species of frog, genus Nyctimystes, from Papua. Copeia, 1954, 83–85.

    Posada, D. & Crandall, K. A. (1998) Modeltest: testing the model of DNA substitution. Bioinformatics, 14, 817–8.

    Richards, S. J., McDonald, K. R. & Ingram, G. J. (1993) Recognition of Litoria eucnemis (Lönnberg) (Anura: Hylidae) in Australia. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, 34, 94.

    Richardson, B.J., Baverstock, P.R. & Adams, M.A. (1986) Allozyme electrophoresis. Academic Press, Sydney, Australia, 410 pp.

    Ronquist, F. & Huelsenbeck, J. P. (2003) MRBAYES 3: Bayesian phylogenetic inference under mixed models. Bioinformatics, 19, 1572–4.

    Rosauer, D., Laffan, S. W., Crisp, M. D., Donnellan. S. C. & Cook, L.G. (2009) Phylogenetic endemism: a new approach for identifying geographical concentrations of evolutionary history. Molecular Ecology, 18, 4061–4072.

    Schneider, C. J., Cunningham, M. & Moritz, C. (1998) Comparative phylogeography and the history of endemic vertebrates in the Wet Tropics rainforests of Australia. Molecular Ecology, 7, 487–98.

    Stamatakis A. (2006) RAxML-VI-HPC: Maximum likelihood-based phylogenetic analyses with thousands of taxa and mixed models. Bioinformatics, 22, 2688–2690.

    Swofford, D. & Selander, R. K. (1981) BIOSYS-1: a FORTRAN program for the comprehensive analysis of electrophoretic data in population genetics and systematics. The Journal of Heredity, 72, 281–283.

    Tyler, M. J. & Davies, M. (1978) Species-groups within the Australopapuan hylid frog genus Litoria Tschudi. Australian Journal of Zoology, Supplementary Series, Number 63, 1–47.

    Tyler, M. J., Davies, M. & Aplin, K. P. (1986) A new stream-dwelling species of Litoria (Anura: Hylidae) from New Guinea. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 100, 63–7.

    van Kampen, P. N. (1909) Die Amphibienfauna von Neu-Guinea, nach der Ausbeute der Neiderlandischen Süd-Neu-Guinea-Expeditionen von 1904–1905 und 1907. Nova Guinea, 9, 31–49.

    van Tuijl, L. (1995) Revised catalogue of the type specimens of recent amphibians and reptiles in the Zoologisch Museum , University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Bulletin of the Zoologisch Museum of the University of Amsterdam, 14, 125–141.

    Young, J. E., Christian, K. A., Donnellan, S. C., Tracy, C. R. & Parry, D. (2005) Comparative analysis of cutaneous evaporative water loss in frogs demonstrates correlation with ecological habits. Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, 78, 847–56.

    Zweifel, R. G. (1980) Results of the Archbold Expeditions. No. 103. Frogs and lizards from the Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 165, 387–434.