A phylogeny of ranid frogs (Anura: Ranoidea: Ranidae), based on a simultaneous analysis of morphological and molecular data

Abstract

During the last two decades, major taxonomic rearrangements were instituted in the anuran family Ranidae. Most of these changes were not based on phylogenetic analysis, and many are controversial. Addressing the phylogeny of Ranidae requires broader taxon sampling within the superfamily Ranoidea, the phylogenetic relationships and higher classification of which are also in a state of flux. No comprehensive attempt has yet been made to reconstruct ranid phylogeny using both morphological and molecular data. In the present contribution, data from 178 organismal characters were collated for 74 exemplar species representing the families Arthroleptidae, Hemisotidae, Hyperoliidae, Mantellidae Microhylidae, Petropedetidae, Rhacophoridae, Sooglossidae, and most subfamilies of Ranidae. These were combined with 1 kb of DNA sequence from the mitochondrial 12S rDNA and 16S rDNA gene regions in a simultaneous parsimony analysis with direct optimization. Results support the classification of Hemisus with the brevicipitine microhylids, confirm that Arthroleptidae (and its two component subfamilies Astylosterninae and Arthroleptinae) are monophyletic, and advocate the recognition of Leptopelidae. Monophyly of Ranidae is compromised by recognition of Petropedetidae, Rhacophoridae and Mantellidae, which should be recognized as subfamilies of Ranidae at present. Furthermore, Petropedetidae was found to be grossly paraphyletic, comprising three clades which are all considered separate subfamilies of Ranidae, i.e., Petropedetinae, Phrynobatrachinae and Cacosterninae.

The phylogenetic position and diversity of the enigmatic mongrel frog Nothophryne Poynton, 1963 (Amphibia, Anura)

“…This conclusion contrasts with the previous morphological-based hypothesis that Nothophryne is the sister group to Cacosternum and Microbatrachella (Scott, 2005) and the relationship with Tomopterna was previously not suspected. Despite our recovered relationship, there are no known unique morphological synapomorphies (though many non-unique ones) that unite…”

“…Approximately Unbiased (AU) tests (Shimodaira, 2002) were used to evaluate the fit of our new and Scott's (2005) previously proposed hypothesis of the relationships of Nothophryne to the small-scale dataset. The tree with the best overall fit was our ML GTR + G tree.…”

“…The tree with the best overall fit was our ML GTR + G tree. This tree was then used as a backbone to generate (by manually editing the position of Nothophryne and other taxa) trees representing Scott's (2005) hypothesis. As explained in Siu-Ting et al (2014), by using the tree that provided the best fit to the data, we avoided a potential bias against the contrasting hypotheses.…”

“…As explained in Siu-Ting et al (2014), by using the tree that provided the best fit to the data, we avoided a potential bias against the contrasting hypotheses. Four trees were tested in total: our Bayesian and ML (GTR + G) trees, a tree representing Scott's (2005) proposed relationships, and a tree where we only moved Nothophryne to portray Scott's (2005) (Smith, 1849), S. bonaespei (Dubois, 1981), Artholeptella villiersi Hewitt, 1935, A. lightfooti (Boulenger, 1910, A. drewesii Channing, Hendricks, and Dawood, 1994, A. subvoce Turner, de Villiers, Dawood, andChanning, 2004, andA. bicolor Hewitt, 1926.…”

“…Recent progress based on molecular data has revealed a wide-range of cryptic diversity of species (e.g., Blackburn, 2008;Channing et al, 2013;Loader et al, 2014;Tolley et al, 2010) and clarified phylogenetic relationships of many taxonomically uncertain groups (Barej et al, 2014;Frost et al, 2006;Pyron and Wiens, 2011;Scott, 2005;Siu-Ting et al, 2014;van der Meijden et al, 2011).…”