Resurrection and re-description of Plethodontohyla laevis (boettger, 1913) and transfer of Rhombophryne alluaudi (Mocquard, 1901) to the genus Plethodontohyla (Amphibia, Microhylidae, Cophylinae)
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The systematics of the cophyline microhylid frog genera Plethodontohyla and Rhombophryne have long been intertwined, and their relationships have only recently started to become clear. While Rhombophryne has received a lot of recent taxonomic attention, Plethodontohyla has been largely neglected. Our study is a showcase of just how complex the taxonomic situation between these two genera is, and the care that must be taken to resolve taxonomic conundrums where old material, multiple genus transitions, and misattribution of new material obfuscate the picture. We assessed the identity of the historic names Dyscophus alluaudi (currently in the genus Rhombophryne), Phrynocara laeve and Plethodontohyla laevis tsianovohensis (both synonyms of Rhombophryne alluaudi) based on an integrative taxonomic approach harnessing genetics, external morphology, osteological data obtained via micro-Computed Tomography (micro-CT) and bioacoustics. We show that (1) the holotype of Dyscophus alluaudi is a member of the genus Plethodontohyla; (2) the Rhombophryne specimens from central Madagascar currently assigned to Rhombophryne alluaudi have no affinity with that species, and are instead an undescribed species; and (3) Phrynocara laeve and Dyscophus alluaudi are not synonymous, but represent closely related species, whereas Plethodontohyla laevis tsianovohensis is tentatively confirmed as synonym of D. alluaudi. We resurrect and re-describe Plethodontohyla laevis, and re-allocate and re-describe Plethodontohyla alluaudi on the basis of new and historic material.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Zoosystematics and Evolution |
| Volume | 94 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Pages (from-to) | 109-135 |
| Number of pages | 27 |
| ISSN | 1435-1935 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2018 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:
We are grateful to the Malagasy authorities, in particular the Ministère de l’Environnement et des Forêts, for issuing research and export permits. We extend our thanks to Karen Freeman and Ingrid Porton of Madagascar Fauna and Flora Group. Fieldwork was financially supported by the Saint Louis Zoo’s Field Research for Conservation program (FRC# 12-12) of the Wildcare Institute and Gond-wana Conservation and Research. We thank Chantal Mis-andeau and Lauric Reynes for sharing their photographs of the amphibians of Ambodiriana. The Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments (ICTE-MICET) provided crucial logistic support. We are grateful to the teams of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris (France), the Naturmuseum Senckenberg in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) and the Mention Zoologie et Biodiversité Animale, Université d’Antananarivo (Madagascar) for the loan of material pertaining to this paper. We thank the reviewers for their useful comments that significantly improved the manuscript. We are indebted to Miguel Vences for having provided three unpublished POMC sequences used in this work. This work was funded by Portuguese National Funds through FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology under the IF/00209/2014/ CP1256/CT0011 Exploratory Research Project. Work of the authors over the past 25 years has been made possible by collaboration accords with the Université d’Antananarivo (Mention Zoologie et Biodiversité Animale) and with the Parc Botanique et Zoologique de Tsimbazaza.
Publisher Copyright:
© Adriana Bellati et al.
- Amphibia, Anura, Integrative taxonomy, Madagascar, Phrynocara laeve, Plethodontohyla alluaudi
Research areas
ID: 284292196