Laboratorio de Biología Evolutiva, Instituto Biósfera, Colegio de Ciencias Biológicas y Ambientales COCIBA, Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Quito, Ecuador.
Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States.
PeerJ. 2022 Mar 18;10:e13109. doi: 10.7717/peerj.13109. eCollection 2022.
The Tropical Andes is the world's most biodiverse hotspot. This region contains >1,000 amphibian species, more than half of which are endemic. Herein we describe two new glassfrog species (Centrolenidae: ) that we discovered within relatively unexplored and isolated localities of the Ecuadorian Andes.
We employed morphological, acoustic, and molecular methods to test the hypothesis that sp. nov and sp. nov. are species new to science. Following standard methods, we generated mitochondrial sequences (16S) of 37 individuals in the genus . We inferred the phylogenetic relationships of the two new species in comparison to all other glassfrogs using Maximum Likelihood. In addition to describing the call of sp. nov., we performed a discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC) with the advertisement call characteristics of several congeners.
Based on an integrative taxonomy approach, we describe two new species. Morphological traits and the inferred phylogeny unambiguously place the new taxa in the genus . Both species are distinguished from other glassfrogs mainly by their dorsal coloration (., dorsum lime green with small light yellow spots, head usually with interorbital bar) and transparent pericardium (., the heart is visible through the ventral skin). The new species exhibit a high morphological similarity (., cryptic) and occur within relatively close geographical proximity (closest aerial distance = 18.9 km); however, their uncorrected distance for the mitochondrial gene 16S is 4.6-4.7%, a value that greatly exceeds the genetic distance between closely related species of centrolenid frogs. The DAPC revealed that the advertisement call of sp. nov. is acoustically distinct.
Our findings are congruent with several previous studies that report a high degree of endemism in the Toisán mountain range, which appears to be isolated from the main Andean cordillera for some amphibian groups. We recommend that both sp. nov. and sp. nov. be listed as Endangered, following IUCN criteria. These new species provide another example of cryptic diversity in the Andes-further evidence that the region fosters much more biodiversity than we have the resources to catalog. Threatened by mining and other exploitative industries, these glassfrogs and many other yet-to-be-discovered Andean species highlight the dire need for effective conservation measures-especially in northwestern Ecuador.
热带安第斯山脉是世界上生物多样性最丰富的热点地区。该地区拥有超过 1000 种两栖动物，其中一半以上是特有种。本文描述了两种新的玻璃蛙物种（Centrolenidae：），它们是在厄瓜多尔安第斯山脉相对未被探索和孤立的地方发现的。
我们采用形态学、声学和分子方法来检验以下假设，即 sp. nov 和 sp. nov. 是科学界的新物种。按照标准方法，我们对属内 37 个个体的线粒体序列（16S）进行了生成。我们使用最大似然法推断了这两个新物种与所有其他玻璃蛙的系统发育关系。除了描述 sp. nov 的叫声外，我们还对几个同属种的广告叫声特征进行了主成分判别分析（DAPC）。
基于综合分类学方法，我们描述了两个新物种。形态特征和推断的系统发育关系明确地将新分类群置于属中。这两个物种主要通过其背部颜色（sp. nov.，背部石灰绿色，有小的浅黄色斑点，头部通常有眶间条纹）和透明的心包（sp. nov.，心脏可透过腹部皮肤看到）与其他玻璃蛙区分开来。新物种表现出高度的形态相似性（sp. nov.，隐存），并且在相对较近的地理距离内出现（最近的空中距离=18.9 公里）；然而，它们的线粒体基因 16S 的未校正距离为 4.6-4.7%，这一数值大大超过了近缘种间的遗传距离。DAPC 显示 sp. nov. 的广告叫声在声学上是不同的。
我们的发现与之前的几项研究一致，这些研究报告称，托伊桑山脉的特有程度很高，该山脉似乎与一些两栖动物群体的主要安第斯山脉隔离。我们建议根据 IUCN 标准，将 sp. nov. 和 sp. nov. 均列为濒危物种。这些新物种为安第斯山脉中隐藏多样性提供了另一个例证，进一步证明该地区拥有比我们有资源记录的更多的生物多样性。这些玻璃蛙和许多其他尚未发现的安第斯物种受到采矿和其他剥削性产业的威胁，突出表明迫切需要采取有效的保护措施，特别是在厄瓜多尔西北部。
