Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
Type: Articles
Published: 2006-06-09
Page range: 35–60
Abstract views: 31
PDF downloaded: 2

Species boundaries among barred river frogs, Mixophyes (Anura: Myobatrachidae) in north-eastern Australia, with descriptions of two new species

Department of Biological Sciences, The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia, 2308
Evolutionary Biology Unit, The South Australian Museum, North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia, 5000 Centre for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia, 5000
Department of Zoology, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia, 4811 Present Address: Vertebrates Department, South Australian Museum, North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia, 5000
Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage, Wet Tropics District Office, P.O. Box 834, Atherton, Australia, 4883
Amphibia allozyme electrophoresis Anura Mixophyes morphology species boundaries

Abstract

Mixophyes are large ground-dwelling myobatrachid frogs from eastern Australia and New Guinea. We use analyses of allozyme frequencies, nucleotide sequences of mitochondrial DNA and morphology to define species boundaries in Mixophyes from the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area of northern Queensland. The molecular analyses identify a minimum of three species in the region. Morphometric and meristic analyses corroborate these distinctions. The existence of two of these species was not previously suspected, and they are formally described herein.

References

  1. Berlocher, S.H. & Swofford, D.L. (1997) Searching for phylogenetic trees under the frequency parsimony criterion: an approach using generalized parsimony. Systematic Biology, 46, 211–215.

    Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. & Edwards, A.W.F. (1967) Phylogenetic analysis: models and estimation procedures. Evolution, 32, 550–570.

    Cogger, H.G. (2000) Reptiles and amphibians of Australia. Reed New Holland, Sydney, Australia.

    Cunningham, C.W., Blackstone, N.W. & Buss, L.W. (1992) Evolution of king crabs from hermit crabs. Nature, 355, 539–542.

    de Queiroz, K. (1998) The general lineage concept of species, species criteria and the process of speciation: a conceptual unification and terminological reconsideration. In: Howard D. J., & Berlocher, S. H. (Eds.) Endless Forms. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K., pp 57–75.

    Davies, M. (1991) Descriptions of the tadpoles of some Australian limnodynastine leptodactylid frogs. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 115, 67–72.

    Donnellan, S., Mahony, M. & Davies, M. (1990) A new species of Mixophyes and first record of the genus in New Guinea. Herpetologica, 46, 266–274.

    Donnellan, S.C., Adams, M., Hutchinson, M. & Baverstock, P.R. (1993) The identification of cryptic species in the Australian herpetofauna — a high research priority. In: Lunney, D., & Ayers, D. (Eds.) Herpetology in Australia: A Diverse Discipline. Transactions of the Royal Zoological Society of N.S.W. Special Edition. Surrey Beatty and Sons, Chipping Norton, Australia, pp. 121–26.

    Felsenstein, J. (1993) PHYLIP Phylogeny Inference Package Version 3.5c.

    Hayek, L.C., Heyer, W.R. & Gascon, C. (2001) Frog morphometrics: a cautionary tale. Alytes, 18, 153–177.

    Huelsenbeck, J.P. & Ronquist, F. (2001) MrBayes: Bayesian inference of phylogeny. Bioinformatics, 17, 754–755.

    Lee, J.C. (1982) Accuracy and precision in anuran morphometrics: artefacts of preservation. Systematic Zoology, 31, 266–281.

    McDonald, K. (1990) Distribution patterns and conservation status of north Queensland rainforest frogs. Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Conservation Technical report No 1.

    Miller, S.A., Dykes, D.D. & Polesky, H.F. (1988) Simple salting out procedure for extracting DNA from human nucleated cells. Nucleic Acids Research, 16, 1215.

    Murphy, R.W., Sites, J.W., Buth, D.G. & Haufler, C.H. (1996) Proteins I: Isozyme Electrophoresis. In: Hillis D., Moritz, C., & Mable, B. (Eds.) Molecular Systematics. Sinauer, Sunderland, Massachusetts, pp. 51–120.

    Posada, D. & Crandall, K.A. (1998) Modeltest: testing the model of DNA substitution. Bioinformatics, 14, 817–8.

    Richardson, B.J., Baverstock, P.R. & Adams, M.A. (1986) Allozyme electrophoresis. Academic Press, Sydney, Australia.

    Schneider, C., Cunningham, M. & Moritz, C. (1998) Comparative phylogeography and the history of endemic vertebrates in the Wet Tropic rainforests of Australia. Molecular Ecology, 7, 487–498.

    Statsoft Inc. (1997) STATISTICA for Windows [computer program manual]. Tulsa Okalahoma. StatSoft Inc., 2300 East 14th Street, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74104, U.S.A.

    Straughan, I.R. (1968) A taxonomic review of the genus Mixophyes (Anura: Leptodactylidae). Proceedings of the Linnean Society of NSW, 93, 52–59.

    Swofford, D.L. (2002) PAUP*. Phylogenetic Analysis Using Parsimony (*and Other Methods), Version 4. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

    Swofford, D.L. & Selander, R.B. (1981) BIOSYS-1: A FORTRAN program for the comprehensive analysis of electrophoretic data in population genetics and systematics. Journal of Heredity, 72, 281–283.

    Swofford, D.L. & Berlocher, S.H. (1987) Inferring evolutionary trees from gene frequency data under the principle of maximum parsimony. Systematic Zoology, 36, 293–325.

    Tyler, M.J. (1968) Papuan frogs of the genus Hyla. Zoologische Verhandelingen Leiden, 96, 1–203.