A new species of Amazophrynella (Anura:Bufonidae) from the southwestern part of the Brazilian Guiana Shield

Abstract

Amazophrynella is a genus of the family Bufonidae, currently represented by three species. The type species of the genus, Amazophrynella minuta, however, is a complex of species occurring throughout the Amazonian biome. This group remains problematic taxonomically; the difficulty lays principally in the lack of diagnostic characters in the original description of A. minuta, the lack of molecular data and refined taxonomic comparison of individuals through its wide distribution. We describe a new species of the genus Amazophrynella, distributed in the southwestern part of the Guiana Shield of Brazil based on a series of morphological and molecular characters. The new species differs from others of the genus by presenting a slightly truncated triangular snout, ventral texture covered by many fine granules, white belly covered with black spots and by fifteen molecular autapomorphies in the 16S rDNA fragment. Uncorrected p-distances of a fragment of the 16S mitochondrial rDNA gene revealed high divergence among other Amazophrynella species (9%-14%). Additionally we provide a new diagnosis of topotypic material of Amazophrynella minuta including molecular data. Our results show the existence of a subestimated diversity in the genus Amazophrynella.

Uncovering the diversity in the Amazophrynella minuta complex: integrative taxonomy reveals a new species of Amazophrynella (Anura, Bufonidae) from southern Peru

“…Since the descriptions of Amazophrynella minuta in 1941 and Amazophrynella bokermanni in 1993, the taxonomy of the genus has not been revised, leading to misdiagnoses of other species as either Amazophrynella minuta or Amazophrynella bokermanni due to the relatively generalized descriptions of these taxa. Three publications since 2012 (Ávila et al 2012; Rojas et al 2014, 2015) described four new species, increasing the taxonomic diversity of the genus by 200%. All four species were previously classified as populations of a single species with a large distribution ( Amazophrynella minuta sensu lato).…”

“…In the following years, an additional four new species of the genus were described: Amazophrynella vote Ávila, Carvalho, Gordo, Ribeiro & Morais, 2012 and Amazophrynella manaos Rojas, Carvalho, Gordo, Ávila, Farias & Hrbek, 2014 based on morphology; Amazophrynella amazonicola and Amazophrynella matses Rojas, Carvalho, Gordo, Ávila, Farias & Hrbek, 2015, based on morphology and genetic data (Ávila et al 2012; Rojas et al 2014, 2015). Species of the genus are distributed in nine South American countries: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guiana, French Guiana Brazil, and presumably in Suriname (Frost et al 2015).…”

“…Using a phylogenetic analysis based on mitochondrial and nuclear genes (Fouquet et al 2007, 2012a), the existence of three independent evolutionary lineages was discovered within the nominal species Amazophrynella minuta from Ecuador and French Guianas; subsequently, other independent evolutionary lineages were discovered from Brazil and Peru (Rojas et al 2014, 2015). The difficulties in delimiting species within the Amazophrynella minuta species complex resides in the relatively generalized diagnosis (see Melin 1941) and the poor geographic sampling.…”

“…Duellman 1978; Zimmerman and Rodrigues 1990; Magnusson and Hero 1991; Rodrigues and Duellman 1993; Duellman and Mendelson 1995; Fouquet et al 2012a). Thus, taxonomy and systematics of populations that are currently part of the Amazophrynella minuta complex remains largely unresolved (Rojas et al 2014), in turn limiting the knowledge of the true taxonomic diversity of the genus (Ávila et al 2012; Rojas et al 2014, 2015). …”

Amphibians of varzea environments and floating meadows of the oxbow lakes of the Middle Purus River, Amazonas, Brazil

“…Although it represents the third highest richness of anurans among the Brazilian states (Toledo & Batista 2012), this biodiversity can be considered underestimated in number and complexity when considering the political limits, given the existence of a large number of cryptic species (Funk et al 2011), several sampling gaps due to the concentration of researches in a few areas (Azevedo-Ramos & Galatti 2002) and the scarcity of studies that use appropriate methods for the record of amphibians belonging to different niches (Lynch, 2005). However , the number of recorded species has increased rapidly, with frequent descriptions of new species of anurans (e.g., Nunes et al 2012, Simões et al 2013, Peloso et al 2014, Rojas et al 2014) and amphibians of the orders Gymnophiona (Maciel & Hoogmoed 2011) and Caudata (Brcko et al 2013) for the biome.…”