Pristimantis undefined-1

Padial, José M. & Riva, Ignacio De La, 2009, Integrative taxonomy reveals cryptic Amazonian species of Pristimantis (Anura: Strabomantidae), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 155 (1), pp. 97-122 : 102-105

PRISTIMANTIS SP. 1 .

Comparative analyses of qualitative morphological characters allow distinguishing Pristimantis sp. 1 from most members of the Pristimantis conspicillatus Group ( Table 3). It remains cryptic to P. fenestratus and barely distinguishable from P. samaipatae . In PCAs of female and male measurements ( Fig. 1 ) the first component explains 78.2 and 60.3% of variability, respectively. For both data sets, the first component seems to represent a cline in body size from P. samaipatae (the largest species) to Pristimantis sp. 1 . This analysis distinguishes almost completely Pristimantis sp. 1 from P. fenestratus (overlap in larger sizes) and completely from P. samaipatae . Pristimantis fenestratus – P. samaipatae are not distinguished. In DFA, the most significant diagnostic variables for adult females were TH (F = 17.9, P <0.001), FL (F = 9.9, P <0.001) and FA (F = 5.36, P <0.01). This model resulted in eight misclassifications (13.8%, N = 58), six for the pair P. samaipatae – P. fenestratus , and two for the pair Pristimantis sp. 1 – P. fenestratus . Abbreviations: IDlR, Ignacio De la Riva’s field series; MNCN, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales ( Spain) ; MNK-A, Amphibian Collection , Museo de Historia Natural Noel Kempff Mercado ( Bolivia) ; MHNC, Museo de Historia Natural , Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco, Peru .

For adult males, FL (F = 13.3), FA (F = 13.2) and F3 (F = 4.3) were the most significant variables, with 15 misclassifications (20%, N = 74), 11 for P. fenestratus – P. samaipatae , three for Pristimantis sp. 1 – P. fenestratus and one for Pristimantis sp. 1 – P. samaipatae .

The call of Pristimantis sp. 1 is very similar in general structure to the call of P. fenestratus and P. samaipatae ( Fig. 2 ). These calls are composed of pulsed notes with amplitude modulation and harmonic structure. They differ in the number and rate of notes emitted and in the length and number of pulses of the notes ( Table 1). Pristimantis samaipatae is the species with the lowest number of notes per call, generally only one. Pristimantis fenestratus tends to emit 2–3 notes, while the number of notes emitted by Pristimantis sp. 1 is usually higher than five. PCA separates the three species ( Fig. 3 ). The three first components explain most variation (63.1, 15.8, 13.0, respectively) related to the length of the call, the numbers of notes and the number of pulses. The second component mostly explains variation in dominant frequency. In DFA, the most significant diagnostic variable was number of pulses (F = 93.2, P <0.0001). This model resulted in four misclassifications (17%, N = 24), three for P. fenestratus – P. samaipatae and one for Pristimantis sp. 1 – P. fenestratus .

MP and NJ majority rule-consensus boostrap analyses and Bayesian phylogenetic analyses (MB) support the reciprocal monophyly of Pristimantis sp. 1 , P. fenestratus and P. samaipatae ( Fig. 4 ). These three taxa form a well-supported clade in which Pristimantis sp. 1 is sister to P. fenestratus . Additionally, uncorrected pairwise distances between Pristimantis sp. 1 – P. fenestratus , Pristimantis sp. 1 – P. samaipatae and P. fenestratus – P. samaipatae range from 2.9 to 3.3 (3.0 ± 0.2), 2.9 to 4.7 (4.5 ± 0.5) and 5.5 to 6.2 (5.8 ± 0.2), respectively (mean and standard deviation in parentheses). The lowest distances ( Pristimantis sp. 1 and P. fenestratus ) fall within values for interspecific genetic distances in relation to other neotropical amphibians, where the mean value has been established at around 3% ( Fouquet et al., 2007). Among the genus Pristimantis , this value is similar to interspecific distances found between some members of the subgenus Yunganastes ( Padial et al., 2007a) , while it is lower than those shown by species belonging to the genus Oreobates ( Padial et al., 2008a) .

In summary, the independence of Pristimantis sp. 1 , P. fenestratus and P. samaipatae is not supported by qualitative morphological characters; it is supported, however, for Pristimantis sp. 1 by morphometric characters, and for the three taxa by bioacoustic and molecular characters. As different independent lines of evidence support the independence of Pristimantis sp. 1 from related species (Table 6), we describe it as a new species (see below).

Figures

Figure 1. Principal component analysis (PCA) of morphometric characters of adult females and adult males of Pristimantis sp. 1, P. fenestratus and P. samaipatae. Abbreviations are: P, principal component; SVL, snout–vent length; HL, head length; HW, head width.

Figure 2. Oscillograms and audiospectrograms of the advertisement call of Pristimantis sp. 1 (A), P. fenestratus (B) and P. samaipatae (C).

Figure 3. Principal component analysis (PCA) of bioacoustic characters for Pristimantis sp. 1, P. fenestratus and P. samaipatae. Abbreviations are: P, principal component; NOT, numbers of notes; NL, note length; NR, note rate.

Figure 4. Majority rule consensus trees based on maximum parsimony (MP) and Bayesian (MB) phylogenetic analyses of partial 16S rDNA (c. 590 bp) of several Pristimantis selected for this study. The outgroup is composed of members of the genus Oreobates. Single values on the MP tree (left) correspond to MP boostrap values. When the MP topology coincides with neighbour-joining (NJ) topology (not illustrated) two values are shown (the second representing NJ boostrap values). Values in the MB tree are Bayesian posterior probabilities.