TY - JOUR
T1 - Mitogenomics of historical type specimens clarifies the taxonomy of Ethiopian Ptychadena Boulenger, 1917 (Anura, Ptychadenidae)
AU - Boissinot, Stephane
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank curators and collection managers from multiple institutions, including Beza-work Afework Bogale and M. Ketema, Natural History Collection, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia; Jeff Streicher, Natural History Museum, London; Andreas Schmitz, Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, Genève; Mark-Oliver Rödel and Frank Tillack, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Multiple undergraduate students and postdoctoral researchers helped with fieldwork. Kyle O’connell provided useful tips for the extraction of DNA from museum material. Yann Bourgeois assisted with the use of MITObim. Yann Bourgeois and Joseph Manthey provided helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript. We are in debt with Marc Arnoux and Nizar Drou, from the Genome Core Facility and the Bioinformatics group at NYUAD. This research was carried out on the High-Performance Computing resources at New York University Abu Dhabi. We also thank Simon Maddock and Loïs Rancilhac for reviewing an earlier version of this manuscript, which helped improve the article.This project was funded by NYUAD Grant AD180 to SB. The NYUAD Sequencing Core is supported by NYUAD Research Institute grant G1205A to the NYUAD Center for Genomics and Systems Biology.
Funding Information:
We thank curators and collection managers from multiple institutions, including Beza-work Afework Bogale and M. Ketema, Natural History Collection, Addis Ababa Uni-versity, Ethiopia; Jeff Streicher, Natural History Museum, London; Andreas Schmitz, Museum d?Histoire Naturelle, Gen?ve; Mark-Oliver R?del and Frank Tillack, Museum f?r Naturkunde Berlin. Multiple undergraduate students and postdoctoral researchers helped with fieldwork. Kyle O?connell provided useful tips for the extraction of DNA from museum material. Yann Bourgeois assisted with the use of MITObim. Yann Bourgeois and Joseph Manthey provided helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript. We are in debt with Marc Arnoux and Nizar Drou, from the Genome Core Facility and the Bioinformatics group at NYUAD. This research was carried out on the High-Performance Computing resources at New York University Abu Dhabi. We also thank Simon Maddock and Lo?s Rancilhac for reviewing an earlier version of this man-uscript, which helped improve the article.This project was funded by NYUAD Grant AD180 to SB. The NYUAD Sequencing Core is supported by NYUAD Research Institute grant G1205A to the NYUAD Center for Genomics and Systems Biology.
Publisher Copyright:
© Jacobo Reyes-Velasco et al.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - e taxonomy of the Ptychadena neumanni species complex, a radiation of grass frogs inhabiting the Ethi- opian highlands, has puzzled scientists for decades because of the morphological resemblance among its members. Whilst molecular phylogenetic methods allowed the discovery of several species in recent years, assigning pre-existing and new names to clades was challenged by the unavailability of molecular data for century-old type specimens. We used Illumina short reads to sequence the mitochondrial DNA of type specimens in this group, as well as ddRAD-seq analyses to resolve taxonomic uncertainties surrounding the P. neumanni species complex. e phylogenetic reconstruction revealed recurrent confusion between Ptychadena erlangeri (Ahl, 1924) and P. neumanni (Ahl, 1924) in the literature. e phylogeny also estab- lished that P. largeni Perret, 1994 represents a junior synonym of P. erlangeri (Ahl, 1924) and distinguished between two small species, P. nana Perret, 1994, restricted to the Arussi Plateau, and P. robeensis Goutte, Reyes-Velasco, Freilich, Kassie & Boissinot, 2021, which inhabits the Bale Mountains. e phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial DNA from type specimens also corroborate the validity of seven recently de- scribed species within the group. Our study shows how modern molecular tools applied to historical type specimens can help resolve long-standing taxonomic issues in cryptic species complexes.
AB - e taxonomy of the Ptychadena neumanni species complex, a radiation of grass frogs inhabiting the Ethi- opian highlands, has puzzled scientists for decades because of the morphological resemblance among its members. Whilst molecular phylogenetic methods allowed the discovery of several species in recent years, assigning pre-existing and new names to clades was challenged by the unavailability of molecular data for century-old type specimens. We used Illumina short reads to sequence the mitochondrial DNA of type specimens in this group, as well as ddRAD-seq analyses to resolve taxonomic uncertainties surrounding the P. neumanni species complex. e phylogenetic reconstruction revealed recurrent confusion between Ptychadena erlangeri (Ahl, 1924) and P. neumanni (Ahl, 1924) in the literature. e phylogeny also estab- lished that P. largeni Perret, 1994 represents a junior synonym of P. erlangeri (Ahl, 1924) and distinguished between two small species, P. nana Perret, 1994, restricted to the Arussi Plateau, and P. robeensis Goutte, Reyes-Velasco, Freilich, Kassie & Boissinot, 2021, which inhabits the Bale Mountains. e phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial DNA from type specimens also corroborate the validity of seven recently de- scribed species within the group. Our study shows how modern molecular tools applied to historical type specimens can help resolve long-standing taxonomic issues in cryptic species complexes.
U2 - 10.3897/zookeys.1070.66598
DO - 10.3897/zookeys.1070.66598
M3 - Article
VL - 1070
SP - 135
EP - 149
JO - ZooKeys
JF - ZooKeys
SN - 1313-2989
ER -