School of Life Sciences, University of Hawaií, Honolulu 96822, HI, USA.
University of San Francisco, San Francisco 94117, CA, USA.
Mol Phylogenet Evol. 2022 Dec;177:107618. doi: 10.1016/j.ympev.2022.107618. Epub 2022 Aug 27.
The microhylid frogs of the New Guinea region are the largest and most ecologically diverse subfamily (Asterophryinae) of one of the largest anuran families in the world and can live in communities of up to 20 species. While there has been recent progress in resolving the phylogenetic relationships of Asterophryinae, significant uncertainties remain, impeding further progress in understanding the evolution of microhabitat use, parental care, and life history variation in this group. In particular, the early divergences at the base of the tree remain unclear; as does the monophyly of some genera; and recent studies have discovered that species with wide geographic distribution are instead cryptic species complexes. In this study, we fortified geographic sampling of the largest previous phylogenetic effort by sequencing an additional 62 taxa and increased data quality and quantity by adding new layers of data vetting and by filling in previously incomplete loci to the five gene dataset (2 mitochondrial, 3 nuclear protein-coding genes) to obtain a dataset that is now 99% complete in over 2400 characters for 233 samples (205 taxa) of Asterophryinae and 3 outgroup taxa, and analyzed microhabitat use data for these taxa from field data and data collected from the literature. Importantly, our sampling includes complete community complements at 19 sites as well as representatives at over 80 sites across New Guinea and its offshore islands. We present a highly resolved molecular phylogeny which, for the first time, has over 95% of nodes supported (84% highly supported) whether using Maximum Likelihood or Bayesian Inference, allowing clarification of all genera (whether monophyletic or clearly not), their sister genera relationships, as well as an age estimate for the Asterophryinae at approximately 20MYA. Early generic diversification occurring between 17 and 12 MYA gave rise to a surprising diversity of about 18 genera as well as the 5 putative microhabitat types. Our tree reveals extensive cryptic diversity calling any widespread taxa into doubt, and clearly demonstrates that complex multispecies communities of Asterophryinae are ecologically diverse, are numerous, and of ancient origin across New Guinea. We discuss the implications of our phylogeny for explaining the explosive diversification of Asterophryinae as the result of adaptive radiation, niche conservatism, and non-adaptive radiation.
新几内亚地区的细趾蟾科蛙类是世界上最大的蛙类家族之一的盘舌蟾亚科中最大和生态最多样化的亚科，它们可以生活在多达 20 个物种的社区中。虽然最近在解决盘舌蟾亚科的系统发育关系方面取得了进展，但仍存在重大不确定性，阻碍了进一步了解该组中小生境利用、亲代照顾和生活史变异的进化。特别是，树基部的早期分歧仍不清楚；一些属的单系性也是如此；最近的研究发现，具有广泛地理分布的物种实际上是隐种复合体。在这项研究中，我们通过对之前最大的系统发育研究进行地理采样，增加了 62 个分类群的测序，通过增加新的数据层来验证，并填补以前未完成的基因座到五基因数据集（2 个线粒体，3 个核蛋白编码基因），以获得一个数据集，现在在超过 2400 个字符中有 99%的完成度，用于 233 个样本（205 个分类群）的盘舌蟾亚科和 3 个外群分类群，并分析了这些分类群的小生境使用数据，这些数据来自实地数据和从文献中收集的数据。重要的是，我们的采样包括 19 个地点的完整群落补充，以及新几内亚及其近海岛屿 80 多个地点的代表。我们提出了一个高度解析的分子系统发育，首次使用最大似然法或贝叶斯推断法，有超过 95%的节点得到支持（84%高度支持），允许澄清所有属（无论是单系的还是明显不是的）、它们的姐妹属关系，以及盘舌蟾亚科的年龄估计约为 20MYA。17 至 12 MYA 之间的早期属多样化产生了大约 18 个属以及 5 种假定的小生境类型，这令人惊讶。我们的树揭示了广泛的隐种多样性，使任何广泛的分类群都值得怀疑，并清楚地表明，新几内亚盘舌蟾亚科的复杂多物种群落在生态上是多样的，数量众多，起源古老。我们讨论了我们的系统发育对解释盘舌蟾亚科的爆炸性多样化的意义，这种多样化是适应辐射、生态位保守和非适应辐射的结果。
