Abstract
We describe a new species of Osteocephalus Fitzinger, 1843 using morphological traits of adult frogs and its larvae, as well as molecular evidence. The new species occurs in the premontane forest of the Cordillera del Yanachaga in the Andes of central Peru, at elevations between 1000 and 1150 m a.s.l. It belongs to the Osteocephalus mimeticus species group and is the sister species of O. mimeticus. It is most similar to three species with predominantly dark irises, tuberculate dorsal skin, and brown dorsal coloration: O. festae Peracca, 1904, O. mimeticus Melin, 1941, and O. verruciger Werner, 1901. Of these three species, the most similar is O. mimeticus. However, the new species can be easily distinguished from O. mimeticus by having a cream or creamy-tan venter with a well-defined pattern of brown chocolate blotches and flecks (venter cream, tan, or brown without marks in O. mimeticus). The tadpoles of O. vasquezi sp. nov. are strikingly different from the tadpoles of O. mimeticus by having a larger oral disk with nine lower labial tooth rows (only six in O. mimeticus). Tadpoles of the new species and those of O. festae are unique among Osteocephalus by belonging to the suctorial ecomorphological guild as shown by their large oral disks. Our time tree suggest that the new species diverged from its sister species at the beginning of the Pleistocene, ~2.5 million years ago.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 237-251 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Evolutionary Systematics |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 6 Jul 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© Pablo J. Venegas et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding
Laboratory work in Ecuador was funded by Secretaría Nacional de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación del Ecuador SENESCYT (Arca de Noé initiative; SRR and Omar Torres principal investigators) and grants from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Dirección General Académica. We are grateful to the staff of the Servicio Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas por el Estado (SERNANP), especially the rangers and volunteers, for their cooperation and for the required research permits. We also thank L. Ríos of Consultores Asociados en Naturaleza y Desarrollo (CANDES) and W. Nañez of CORBIDI for the logistic support in the field, and D. Matos and A. Orihuela from Ministerio del Ambiente (MINAM) for the coordination with the SERNANP. The field work was funded by the MINAM. Laboratory work in Ecuador was funded by Secretaría Nacional de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación del Ecuador SENESCYT (Arca de Noé initiative; SRR and Omar Torres principal investigators) and grants from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Dirección General Académica. We are grateful to the staff of the Servicio Nacional de Áreas Naturales Prote-gidas por el Estado (SERNANP), especially the rangers and volunteers, for their cooperation and for the required research permits. We also thank L. Ríos of Consultores Asociados en Naturaleza y Desarrollo (CANDES) and W. and D. Matos and A. Orihuela from Ministerio del Ambi-ente (MINAM) for the coordination with the SERNANP. The field work was funded by the MINAM.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Consultores Asociados en Naturaleza y Desarrollo | |
| Dirección General Académica | |
| MINAM | |
| Ministerio del Ambiente | |
| Secretaría Nacional de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación del Ecuador SENESCYT | |
| Servicio Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas por el Estado |
Keywords
- Biodiversity
- DNA
- Osteocephalus mimeticus
- new species
- phylogeny
- tadpole
- taxonomy
