Diversity of Water Frogs Pelophylax spp. in Turkey: Do Mating Vocalizations Mirror Nominal Taxon Delimitation?

Abstract

Informed conservation management requires exact knowledge on the species diversity of the taxon group in focus within a geographic area, specifically on the occurrence of endemics. In Turkey, there are three water frog taxa of the genus Pelophylax; one is the widespread P. bedriagae, the other two are geographically restricted to either Thrace (P. ridibundus) or to the Anatolian Lake district (P. caralitanus). The species status of the Beyşehir frog P. caralitanus has been questioned since its proposal in 2001. We recorded and analyzed advertisement and release vocalizations at representative populations of Pelophylax taxa to assess the degree of inter-taxon differentiation and the potential for premating isolation. We found that P. bedriagae and P. caralitanus have much more similar vocalizations than both have compared to P. ridibundus. A functional bioacoustic premating barrier between bedriagae and caralitanus in syntopy does not exist according to our study. The low degree of bioacoustic differentiation mirrors earlier genetic, karyological, and morphological findings. We conclude that the Beyşehir frogs do not deserve species status and that P. caralitanus should be considered a junior synonym of P. bedriagae. Therefore, the number of endemic anuran species in Turkey decreases to one.

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“…In the most recent update of the species list of European herpetofauna, P. kurtmuelleri is not recognised as a valid taxon, while the status of P. bedriagae is somewhat uncertain, with a wide hybrid zone suggesting European and Anatolian lineages of the Pelophylax ridibundus–bedriagae complex are conspecific ( Speybroeck et al, 2020 ). Most recently, acoustic data was used to suggest removal of the species status of Pelophylax caralitanus (controversial taxon suggested in 2001) and its synonymization with P. bedriagae ( Sinsch, Werding & Kaya, 2023 ).…”