Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
Type: Article
Published: 2023-01-09
Page range: 459-472
Abstract views: 685
PDF downloaded: 56

Pseudophilautus pardus, a junior synonym of P. viridis (Amphibia: Anura: Rhacophoridae)

1 Department of Zoology, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka.
1 Department of Zoology, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka.
2 Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology, Colombo 07, Sri Lanka.
3College of Forestry, Guangxi Key Lab for Forest Ecology and Conservation, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, PR China.
1 Department of Zoology, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka.
4Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
5Herpetological Foundation of Sri Lanka, 31/5, Alwis Town, Hendala, Wattala, Sri Lanka.
6Department of Forestry and environment science, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka.
3College of Forestry, Guangxi Key Lab for Forest Ecology and Conservation, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, PR China.
Amphibia Extinct species Sri Lanka taxonomy Shrub frogs DNA barcoding Polychromaticism

Abstract

Pseudophilautus pardus, was first described in 2007, based on a single specimen collected in Sri Lanka during the 19th century. Its absence in recent surveys suggested that the species was extinct. The distinctive spotted dorsal coloration, together with other morphological features, was used to distinguish it from congeners. In 2013, we discovered a specimen resembling the holotype of P. pardus in Samanala Strict Nature Reserve. A DNA analysis based on the 16S rRNA mt-DNA locus recovered a low uncorrected pairwise genetic distance of 0.77–0.96% between the recent example of ‘P. pardus’ and a congener, P. viridis. Molecular species delimitation methods suggest P. pardus and P. virids to be a single operational taxonomic unit. Morphological analyses using the freshly collected specimen, together with numerous photographic records show P. viridis to be a highly polychromatic species within which the coloration observed in P. pardus too occurs, though rarely. We conclude that P. pardus is a junior synonym of P. viridis.

 

References

  1. Chan, K.O., Grismer, L.L. & Brown, R.M. (2018) Comprehensive multi-locus phylogeny of Old World tree frogs (Anura: Rhacophoridae) reveals taxonomic uncertainties and potential cases of over- and underestimation of species diversity. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 127, 1010–1019. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2018.07.005
    Chernomor, O., von Haeseler, A. & Minh, B.Q. (2016) Terrace aware data structure for phylogenomic inference from supermatrices. Systematic Biology, 65 (6), 997–1008. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syw037
    de Queiroz, K. (2005) Different species problems and their resolution. Bioessays, 27, 1263–1269. http://doi.org/10.1002/bies.20325
    Drummond, A.J. & Rambaut, A. (2007) BEAST: Bayesian evolutionary analysis by sampling Trees. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 7, 1–8. http://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-7-214
    Ellepola, G., Herath, J., Manamendra-Arachchi, K., Wijayathilaka, N., Senevirathne, G., Pethiyagoda, R. & Meegaskumbura, M. (2021) Molecular species delimitation of shrub frogs of the genus Pseudophilautus (Anura, Rhacophoridae). PLoS One, 16, 16 (10), e0258594. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258594
    IUCN (2021) The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2021-3. Available from: https://www.iucnredlist.org (accessed 20 December 2021)
    Kalyaanamoorthy, S., Minh, B.Q., Wong, T.K.F., von Haeseler, A. & Jermiin, L.S. (2017) ModelFinder: fast model selection for accurate phylogenetic estimates. Nature Methods, 14, 587–589. https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.4285
    Kapli, P., Lutteropp, S., Zhang, J., Kobert, K., Pavlidis, P., Stamatakis, A. & Flouri, T. (2017) Multi-rate Poisson tree processes for single-locus species delimitation under maximum likelihood and Markov chain Monte Carlo. Bioinformatics, 33 (11), 1630–1638. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btx025
    Lanfear, R., Frandsen, P.B., Wright, A.M., Senfeld, T. & Calcott, B. (2017) PartitionFinder 2: new methods for selecting partitioned models of evolution for molecular and morphological phylogenetic analyses. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 34 (3), 772–773. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msw260
    Manamendra-Arachchi, K. & Pethiyagoda, R. (2005) The Sri Lankan shrub-frogs of the genus Philautus Gistel, 1848 (Ranidae: Rhacophorinae), with description of 27 new species. Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, 12, 163–303.
    Meegaskumbura, M., Bossuyt, F., Pethiyagoda, R., Manamendra-Arachchi, K., Bahir, M., Milinkovitch, M.C. & Schneider, C.J. (2002). Sri Lanka: an amphibian hot spot. Science, 298 (5592), 379–379.
    Meegaskumbura, M. & Manamendra-Arachchi, K. (2005). Description of eight new species of shrub frogs (Ranidae: Rhacophorinae: Philautus) from Sri Lanka. Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, 12, 305–338.
    Meegaskumbura, M., Senevirathne, G., Manamendra-Arachchi, K., Pethiyagoda, R., Hanken, J. & Schneider, C.J. (2019). Diversification of shrub frogs (Rhacophoridae, Pseudophilautus) in Sri Lanka—timing and geographic context. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 132,14–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2018.11.004
    Meegaskumbura, M., Manamendra-Arachchi, K. & Pethiyagoda, R. (2009). Two new species of shrub frogs (Rhacophoridae: Philautus) from lowlands of Sri Lanka. Zootaxa, 2122 (1), 51–68. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.2122.1.2
    Meegaskumbura, M., Manamendra-arachchi, K., Schneider, C.J. & Pethiyagoda, R. (2007) New species amongst Sri Lanka’s extinct shrub frogs (Amphibia: Rhacophoridae: Philautus). Zootaxa, 1397 (1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.1397.1.1
    Meegaskumbura, M. & Manamendra-Arachchi, K. (2011) Two new species of shrub frogs (Rhacophoridae: Pseudopilautus) from Sri Lanka. Zootaxa, 2747 (1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.2747.1.1
    Minh, B.Q., Nguyen, M.A.T. & von Haeseler, A. (2013). Ultrafast approximation for phylogenetic bootstrap. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 30 (5), 1188–1195. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mst024
    Palumbi, S.R. (1996) Nucleic acids II: The polymerase chain reaction. In: Hillis, D.M., Moritz, C. & Mable, B.K. (Eds.), Molecular Systematics. Sinauer Associates, Inc., Sunderland, Massachusetts, pp. 205–247.
    Puillandre, N., Lambert, A., Brouillet, S. & Achaz, G. (2012) ABGD, Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery for primary species delimitation. Molecular Ecology, 21, 1864–1877. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2011.05239.x
    Rambaut, A., Drummond, A.J., Xie, D., Baele, G. & Suchard, M.A. (2018) Posterior summarization in Bayesian phylogenetics using Tracer 1.7. Systematic Biology, 67 (5), 901–904. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syy032
    Reid, N.M. & Carstens, B.C. (2012) Phylogenetic estimation error can decrease the accuracy of species delimitation: a Bayesian implementation of the general mixed Yule-coalescent model. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 12, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-12-196
    Ronquist, F., Teslenko, M., Mark, P., Ayres, D., Darling, A., Höhna, S., Larget, B., Liu, L., Suchard, M. & Huelsenbeck, J. (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
    Stuart, S.N., Hoffmann, M., Chanson, J.S., Cox, N.A., Berridge, R.J., Ramani, P. & Young, B.E. (2008). Threatened amphibians of the world. Lynx Edition. Conservation International, Barcelona, 758 pp.
    Swofford, D.L. (2002) PAUP*. Phylogenetic analysis using parsimony (*and other methods). Vol. 4.0b10. Sinauer Associates, Inc., Sunderland, Massachusetts. [program]
    Tamura, K., Peterson, D., Peterson, N., Stecher, G., Nei, M. & Kumar, S. (2011) MEGA5: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis using maximum likelihood, evolutionary distance, and maximum parsimony methods. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 28 (10), 2731–2739. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msr121
    Vences, M., Thomas, M., Van der Meijden, A., Chiari, Y. & Vieites, D.R. (2005) Comparative performance of the 16S rRNA gene in DNA barcoding of amphibians. Frontiers in Zoology, 2 (1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-9994-2-5
    Wickramasinghe, L.J.M., Vidanapathirana, D.R., Ariyarathne, S., Rajeev, M.D.G., Chanaka, A., Pastorini, J., Chathuranga, G. & Wickramasinghe, N. (2013a) Lost and found: One of the world’s most elusive amphibian Pseudophilautus stellatus (Kelaart 1853) rediscovered. Zootaxa, 3620 (1), 112–128. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3620.1.5
    Wickramasinghe, L.J.M., Vidanapathirana, D.R., Rajeev, M.D.G., Ariyarathne, S.C., Chanaka, A.W., Priyantha, L.L., Bandara, I.N. & Wickramasinghe, N. (2013b). Eight new species of Pseudophilautus (Amphibia: Anura: Rhacophoridae) from Sripada World Heritage Site (Peak Wilderness), a local amphibian hotspot in Sri Lanka. Journal of Threatened Taxa, 5, 3789–3920. https://doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o3547.5181-93
    Wickramasinghe, L.J.M., Vidanapathirana, D.R., Rajeev, M.D.G. & Wickramasinghe, N. (2013c) Rediscovery of Pseudophilautus hypomelas (Günther, 1876) (Amphibia: Anura: Rhacophoridae) from the Peak Wilderness, Sri Lanka, a species thought to be extinct! Journal of Threatened Taxa, 5, 5181–5193 https://doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o3547.5181-93
    Zhang, J., Kapli, P., Pavlidis, P. & Stamatakis, A. (2013) A general species delimitation method with applications to phylogenetic placements. Bioinformatics, 29 (22), 2869–2876. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btt499