Molecular phylogeny of French Guiana Hylinae: implications for the systematic and biodiversity of the Neotropical frogs

Abstract

In this study we used nucleotide sequences from a segment of mitochondrial 16S ribosomal DNA gene to investigate the evolutionary relationships of some French Guiana Hylinae. New sequences, representing the members of different French Guiana frogs-five specimens of the Scinax genus, two Hyla, one Osteocephalus, one Hyalinobatrachium and two Rana as out-group-were examined. In addition, 26 sequences available from GenBank database representing the other subfamilies of the Hylidae were added to our study. This work allowed us to clarify relationships within the four hylids subfamilies (Pelodryadinae, Phyllomedusinae, Hemiphractinae and Hylinae) and the phylogenetic placement of the enigmatic Scinax genus within the Hylidae. We found that: (1) the Scinax genus displays a high level of differentiation in comparison to two other genera (Litoria and Hyla) belonging to 'Hylidae' family; (2) the Hylinae are paraphyletic given the position of the Litoria, which was the sister-group of the Hyla and the Osteocephalus genera; (3) the anterior works and our results (based on two different data sets) showed the paraphyly of the Hylidae questioning the validity of this family; (4) the reassessment of these different taxonomic groups will induce a huge implication on the estimation (past, present and future) of the biodiversity (in Neotropical frogs).

High Species Richness of Scinax Treefrogs (Hylidae) in a Threatened Amazonian Landscape Revealed by an Integrative Approach

“…Scinax cruentommus has been widely reported from Peru, Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia [65], and from French Guiana [7, 42, 80–82]. In our barcoding analyses, a Scinax specimen from PMIR identified as S .…”

“…cruentommus BRA) differs from S . cruentommus GUF ( sensu [7, 42, 80–81]) with genetic distances of 31 to 32%. Unlike S .…”

Systematics of treefrogs of the Hypsiboas calcaratus and Hypsiboas fasciatus species complex (Anura, Hylidae) with the description of four new species

“…Phylogenetic analyses are an expansion of those presented by Funk et al (2012) to include additional sequences of Hypsiboas calcaratus , Hypsiboas dentei , Hypsiboas fasciatus and Hypsiboas raniceps published by Darst and Cannatella (2004), Faivovich et al (2004, 2005), Salducci et al (2002, 2005), Jansen et al (2011), Wiens et al (2005, 2006) and 19 sequences of the nuclear gene RAG-1 (recombination activating gene 1). GenBank accession numbers for the sequences not included in Funk et al (2012) are shown in Table 4.…”

Revealing cryptic diversity using molecular phylogenetics and phylogeography in frogs of the Scinax ruber and Rhinella margaritifera species groups

“…Each alignment was compared with available secondary structures (12S and 16S) (Van de Peer et al, 1998) as described in Salducci et al (2002), or with the reading frame (tyrosinase). The analyses were performed on 368 (Scinax)-387 (Rhinella) aligned bp of the 12S rDNA gene, 413-411 bp of the 16S rDNA gene, 388-539 bp of the tyrosinase gene and 1299-1325 bp of the 18S rDNA gene.…”

“…1). Sequences of 14 of the hylid samples have already been published in Salducci et al (2002Salducci et al ( , 2005 IdentiWcations of specimens were mainly based on the only available comprehensive reference on anurans of French Guiana (Lescure and Marty, 2000). However, the taxonomy used by these authors may in some aspects be conXicting with the classiWcation used in other parts of the Neotropics.…”