Herein, we present an updated inventory and the variations of frog communities' composition from five areas of humid Chaco and Cerrado in municipality of Porto Murtinho, Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil. This municipality is located in an area with three ecoregions: Chaco, Cerrado and Pantanal. Through acoustic and visual nocturnal/diurnal and pitfall evaluations from a period of over five years, we recorded 31 species in the Cerrado and 29 species in the humid Chaco. About 90% of the species were previously registered in the municipality of Porto Murtinho. A non-metric multidimensional analysis based on a presence/absence matrix revealed a separation in our sampling sites and communities with Cerrado and humid Chaco characteristics. This peculiarity in the species composition must be related to the transition zone, with the presence of mixed species characteristics of Cerrado and humid Chaco in both areas in the municipality of Porto Murtinho experiences a high degree of deforestation pressure, which threatens both the Cerrado and humid Chaco vegetation. This highlights the importance of knowledge actions about the richness and composition of species, corroborating ecological tools to support conservation in this region.
The causes of population genetic divergence within the Atlantic Forest of South America are diverse. For example, studies have pointed to the importance of regions of stable suitable habitat throughout the Pleistocene, large rivers acting as biogeographic barriers, as well as changes in elevation. Here, we generate a phylogeographic dataset for the Rio Doce Snouted Treefrog (Ololygon carnevallii), a species that is endemic to a narrow portion of the Atlantic Forest. Gene-tree analyses demonstrate that this species is composed of three distinct lineages that diverged from one another during the Pliocene. Ecological niche models projected to climate during the Pleistocene and mid-Holocene suggest that regions of suitable habitat would have shifted through time since the last glacial maximum, and regions of stable habitat were identified. Using generalized dissimilarity modeling, we find no association between genetic divergence and ecological niche models, riverine barriers, elevation, slope, or current climate suggesting that none of these variables have been responsible for lineage formation in the Rio Doce Snouted Treefrog. We suggest that additional phylogeographic studies of narrowly endemic species within the Atlantic Forest are needed to better understand the drivers of diversification and accumulation of biodiversity.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.