Genetic Diversification of Adelphobates quinquevittatus (Anura: Dendrobatidae) and the Influence of Upper Madeira River Historical Dynamics

Distribution and diversification of Adelphobates, emblematic poison frogs from Brazilian Amazonia

“…Cienc (2024) 96(1) e20230659 18 | 35 were recorded. Similarly, tadpoles from other dendrobatids were not found in ouriços where A. quinquevittatus tadpoles were collected during the samples of de Medeiros et al (2021). On the other hand, the co-occurrence of Ranitomeya species is common in the same area.…”

“…However, this gene also seemed to be poorly resolute in phylogeographic studies, at least in the genus Adelphobates. This was evidenced by the low haplotypic diversity in the species studied so far (Rojas et al 2020, de Medeiros et al 2021, and probably reflects differences in nucleotide substitutions rates, being for COI 1.04 ± 0.27 substitutions per site per 100 millions of years (Myr), and for 16S, 0.07 ± 0.03 substitutions per site per 100 Myr (Mueller 2006). For this reason, we chose the marker COI as it was more informative.…”

“…ASAP is a method to delimit species based on genetic distances and is recommended for analysis from a single locus (Puillandre et al 2021). We acknowledge that a phylogenetic tree built from a single locus can differ considerably from the species tree (Tang et al 2014), but our objective was to estimate the number of possible OTUs, considering that at least two of the species of Adelphobates have already shown genetically structured populations (Rojas et al 2020, de Medeiros et al 2021.…”

“…Phylogeographic studies focusing on aromobatids from the Brazilian Amazon have frequently demonstrated that intraspecific diversification is common, especially within widely distributed species, and can often lead to the identification of candidate species (Amézquita et al 2009, Simões et al 2010, Kaefer et al 2013, Maia et al 2017, Réjaud et al 2020, Fernandes et al 2021. Nonetheless, there are relatively fewer studies focused on dendrobatids in the same region, for which the broad distributions currently proposed may reflect underestimation of local biodiversity due mainly to: (1) scarcity of faunal surveys in not very accessible areas where probable occurrence of a particular species has been attributed, and (2) scarcity of phylogeographic and taxonomic studies focused on the diversity of potential species complexes (Noonan & Gaucher 2006, Wollenberg et al 2006, Rojas et al 2020, de Medeiros et al 2021). An example of this underestimation was the "ventrimaculatus" complex (Caldwell & Myers 1990), widely distributed in the Amazon basin, which after taxonomic and systematic revisions was subdivided into several species of Ranitomeya (Grant et al 2006, Brown et al 2011.…”

“…Recently, phylogeographic studies of widely distributed Amazonian species such as Dendrobates tinctorius, Adelphobates galactonotus and A. quinquevittatus resulted in the identification of genetically structured populations, although no candidate species have been identified so far (Noonan & Gaucher 2006, Rojas et al 2020, de Medeiros et al 2021. Important evolutionary processes were proposed as catalysts of this intraspecific divergence, such as isolation in forest refuges (Noonan & Gaucher 2006), the action of rivers as barriers (Rojas et al 2020, de Medeiros et al 2021, and river dynamics (de Medeiros et al 2021), although no predominant process to explain diversification within the species already studied has emerged.…”