Nuclear and mitochondrial phylogeography of the European fire‐bellied toadsBombina bombinaandBombina variegatasupports their independent histories

Abstract

Exact location and number of glacial refugia still remain unclear for many European cold-blooded terrestrial vertebrates. We performed a fine-scaled multilocus phylogeographic analysis of two Bombina species combining mitochondrial variation of 950 toads from 385 sites and nuclear genes (Rag-1, Ncx-1) from a subset of samples to reconstruct their colonization and contemporary variation patterns. We identified the lowlands northwest of the Black Sea and the Carpathians to be important refugial areas for B. bombina and B. variegata, respectively. This result emphasizes the importance of Central European refugia for ectothermic terrestrial species, far north of the Mediterranean areas regarded as exclusive glacial refugia for the animals. Additional refugia for B. variegata have been located in the southern Apennines and Balkans. In contrast, no evidence for the importance of other east European plains as refugial regions has been found. The distribution of mtDNA and Ncx-1 variation suggests the presence of local refugia near the Black Sea for B. bombina; however, coalescent simulations did not allow to distinguish whether one or two refugia were present in the region. Strong genetic drift apparently accompanied postglacial expansions reducing diversity in the colonization areas. Extended sampling, coupled with the multilocus isolation with migration analysis, revealed a limited and geographically restricted gene flow from the Balkan to Carpathian populations of B. variegata. However, despite proximity of inferred B. bombina and B. variegata refugia, gene exchange between them was not detected.

Extra-Mediterranean glacial refugia in a Mediterranean faunal element: the phylogeography of the chalk-hill blue Polyommatus coridon (Lepidoptera, Lycaenidae)

“…Similar examples exist for animal species: The Brown Bear, Ursus arctos , once being selected for the bear paradigm of “Mediterranean” species, had extra-Mediterranean occurrences during the last ice age at least in the Carpathians2526. Carpathian ice age refugia have also been demonstrated for Bombina toads27. Endemic haplotypes of the Common Vole, Microtus arvalis , in the area of the Black Forest in Germany imply glacial survival in the vicinity of these mountains28.…”

Are there real sexual morphometric differences in yellow-bellied toads (Bombina spp.; Bombinatoridae)?

“…B. pachypus was classified as a subspecies of B. variegata for many years but, since the late 20th century, it has been considered a full species (Nascetti et al, 1982;Fromhage, Vences and Veith, 2004). Its taxonomic position is still controversial and debated (Hofman et al, 2007;Zheng, Fu and Shugiang, 2009;Fijarczyk et al, 2011). While a clear assessment of its taxonomic status is still lacking, based on the work of Canestrelli et al (2006), we chose to consider B. pachypus a full species.…”

Phylogeography of Diptychus maculatus (Cyprinidae) endemic to the northern margin of the QTP and Tien Shan region

“…The other is the discovery of phylogeographic structure of this species [19, 20]. However, these studies were largely questioned and unable to uncover the entire evolutionary relationship between the fish and the mountain-river systems because of the inadequate samples size, incomplete geographic coverage (for example, no Indus River), and only mtDNA, the matrilineal marker, were used [15, 21–23]. To overcome these issues, we reconstructed the phylogeographic histoy of D. maculatus by applying both mtDNA and nucDNA markers together with the intensive sampling covering all the habitats.…”