Abstract
We describe a new plethodontid salamander species of the genus Isthmura, known only from one locality in the mountainous region of central Veracruz, Mexico. Like its congeners, Isthmura corrugata sp. nov. has a large and robust body, but it is easily distinguished from the other species in the genus by the absence of any spot or mark on the dorsum (except by dull reddish brown coloration on eyelids) and by extremely well-marked costal grooves separated by very pronounced costal folds. Based on an mtDNA phylogeny, the new species is most closely related to the geographically distant I. boneti and I. maxima but occurs very near I. naucampatepetl and I. gigantea on the eastern slope of Cofre de Perote, Veracruz. The region where I. corrugata occurs contains a high number of plethodontid salamander species and is threatened by human activity.
References
Bezy, R., Enderson, E.F. & Bonine, K.E. (2004) Tlaconete Pinto Pseudoeurycea bellii (Gray, 1850) Arizona’s lost salamander. Sonoran Herpetologist, 17, 119–122.
Castillo-Campos, G., Avendaño, R.S. & Medina M.E. (2011) Diversidad de Ambientes: Flora y vegetación. In: Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (Ed.), La Biodiversidad del Estado de Veracruz: Estudio de Estado. CONABIO, Gobierno del Estado de Veracruz, Universidad Veracruzana, Instituto de Ecología, A.C., México, D.F., pp. 163–283.
Dubois, A. & Raffaëlli, J. (2012) A new ergotaxonomy of the order Urodela Duméril, 1805 (Amphibia, Batrachia). Alytes, 28, 77–161.
Edgar, R.C. (2004) MUSCLE: a multiple sequence alignment method with reduced time and space complexity. BMC Bioinformatics, 5, 1–19.
https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2105-5-113García Franco, J.G., Castillo-Campos, G., Mehltreter, K., Martínez, M.L. & Vázquez, G. (2008) Estructura y composición de un bosque mesófilo del centro de Veracruz, México. Boletín de la Sociedad Botánica de México, 83, 37–52.
Hernández-López, P. (2015) Diversidad de especies de anfibios y reptiles en dos áreas naturales protegidas de la región montañosa del centro de Veracruz, México. B.Sc. thesis, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico, 38 pp.
IUCN (2016) The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2016-3. International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, Cambridge. Available from: http://www.iucnredlist.org/ (accessed 7 December 2016)
Kearse, M., Moir, R., Wilson, A., Stones-Havas, S., Cheung, M., Sturrock, S., Buxton, S., Cooper, A., Markowitz, S., Duran, C., Thierer, T., Ashton, B., Mentjies, P. & Drummond, A. (2012) Geneious Basic: an integrated and extendable desktop software platform for the organization and analysis of sequence data. Bioinformatics, 28, 1647–1649.
https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/bts199
Köhler, G. (2012) Color catalogue for field biologists. Herpeton, Offenbach, 49 pp.
Lanfear, R., Calcott, B., Ho, S.Y. & Guindon, S. (2012) Partitionfinder: combined selection of partitioning schemes and substitution models for phylogenetic analyses. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 29, 1695–1701.
https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mss020
Lowe, C.H., Jones, C.J. & Wright, J.W. (1968) A new plethodontid from Sonora, Mexico. Contributions in Science, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 140, 1–11.
Lynch, J.F. & Wake, D.B. (1989) Two new species of Pseudoeurycea (Amphibia: Caudata) from Oaxaca, México. Contributions in Science, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 411, 11–22.
Meza-Parral, Y. & Pineda, E. (2015) Amphibian Diversity and Threatened Species in a Severely Transformed Neotropical Region in Mexico. PLoS ONE, 10, e0121652.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0121652
Miller, M.A., Pfeiffer, W. & Schwartz, T. (2010) Creating the CIPRES Science Gateway for inference of large phylogenetic trees. Proceedings of the Gateway Computing Environments Workshop (GCE), 2010, 1–8.
https://doi.org/10.1109/GCE.2010.5676129Moritz, C., Schneider, C.J. & Wake, D.B. (1992) Evolutionary relationships within the Ensatina eschscholtzii complex confirm the ring species interpretation. Systematic Biology, 41, 273–291.
https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/41.3.273
Oropeza-Sánchez, M.T. (2016) Ocupación y Detección de anfibios con diferente historia natural en un bosque de niebla en México. Ms thesis, Instituto de Ecología, A.C., Mexico, 49 pp.
Palumbi, S.R., Martin, A.P., Romano, S., McMillan, W.O., Stice, L. & Grabowski, G. (1991) The Simple Fool's Guide to PCR. Special Publication, Department of Zoology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, 24 pp.
Parra-Olea, G., Papenfuss, T.J. & Wake, D.B. (2001) New Species of Lungless Salamanders of the Genus Pseudoeurycea (Amphibia: Caudata: Plethodontidae) from Veracruz, Mexico. Scientific Papers, Natural History Museum, University of Kansas, 20, 1–9.
Parra-Olea, G., García-París, M., Papenfuss, T.J. & Wake, D.B. (2005) Systematics of the Pseudoeurycea bellii (Caudata: Plethodontidae) species complex. Herpetologica, 61, 145–158.
Parra-Olea, G., Rovito, S.M., Márquez-Valdelmar, L., Cruz, G., Murrieta-Galindo, R. & Wake, D.B. (2010) A new species of Pseudoeurycea from the cloud forest in Veracruz, Mexico. Zootaxa, 2725, 57–68.
Raffaëlli, J. (2007) Les Urodeles du Monde. Penclen edition, Condé-sur-Noireau, 377 pp.
Ronquist, F., Teslenko, M., van der Mark, P., Ayres, D.L., Darling, A., Hohna, S., Larget, B., Liu, L., Suchard, M.A. & Huelsenbeck, J.P. (2012) MrBayes 3.2: Efficient Bayesian phylogenetic inference and model choice across a large model space. Systematic Biology, 61, 539–542.
https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/sys029
Rovito, S.M., Parra-Olea, G., Hanken, J., Bonett, R.M. & Wake, D.B. (2013) Adaptive radiation in miniature: the minute salamanders of the Mexican highlands (Amphibia: Plethodontidae: Thorius). Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 109, 622–643.
https://doi.org/10.1111/bij.12083
Rovito, S.M., Parra-Olea, G., Recuero, E. & Wake, D.B. (2015) Diversification and biogeographical history of Neotropical plethodontid salamanders. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 175, 167–188.
https://doi.org/10.1111/zoj.12271
Sandoval-Comte, A., Pineda, E. & Aguilar-López, J.L. (2012) In search of critically endangered species: the current situation of two tiny salamander species in the Neotropical mountains of Mexico. PLoS ONE, 7, e34023e.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034023
Stamatakis, A. (2006) RAxML-VI-HPC: Maximum likelihood-based phylogenetic analyses with thousands of taxa and mixed models. Bioinformatics, 22, 2688–2690.
https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btl446Tobar-Suárez, L.C. (2012) Anfibios y remanentes ribereños: Análisis de la diversidad funcional y de especies en un paisaje tropical de montaña en México. Ms thesis Instituto de Ecología, A.C., Mexico, 81 pp.
Toledo-Garibaldi, M. & Williams-Linera, G. (2014) Tree diversity patterns in successive vegetation types along an elevation gradient in the Mountains of Eastern Mexico. Ecological Research, 29, 1097–1104.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-014-1196-4
Wake, D.B. & Lynch, J.F. (1976) The distribution, ecology, and evolutionary history of plethodontid salamanders in tropical America. Scientific Bulletin of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 25, 1–65.
Wake, D.B., Papenfuss, T.J. & Lynch, J.F. (1992) Distribution of salamanders along elevational transects in Mexico and Guatemala. Tulane Studies in Zoology and Botany, Supplemental Publication, 1, 303–319.