River drainages and phylogeography: An evolutionary significant lineage of shovel-nosed salamander (Desmognathus marmoratus) in the southern Appalachians

Phylogeographical structure and demographic expansion in the endemic alpine stream salamander (Hynobiidae: Batrachuperus) of the Qinling Mountains

“…north-south break 15, 16 and west-east or west-central-east breaks 19–21, 27–29 , indicating that Qinling Mountains may have played different roles in evolutionary history of different species in this region. The current genetic patterns of stream-associated amphibians may have been shaped by drainage systems 30–34 . Thus, drainage systems ascribed to the Yangtze River and Yellow River may have influenced the distribution and population structure of B .…”

The snails the dinosaurs saw: are the pleurocerid populations of the Older Appalachians a relict of the Paleozoic Era?

“…In addition to redirecting the interior paleodrainages, Pleistocene climatic oscillations are hypothesized to have caused numerous stream piracies between interior tributaries and drainages of the Atlantic. A great deal of research has been directed toward identifying the sites of such piracies and evaluating their effects on the aquatic fauna of today (e.g., Ross 1969, Howard and Morgan 1993, Strange and Burr 1997, Jones et al 2006.…”

Genetic diversity in a narrowly endemic, recently described dusky salamander, Desmognathus folkertsi, from the southern Appalachian Mountains

“…(2) D. folkertsi was recently described (Camp et al 2002) as a cryptic species of D. quadramaculatus, which has a larger geographic range with extensive phylogenetic structuring (Titus and Larson 1996;Rissler and Taylor 2003;Jackson 2005;Jones et al 2006);and (3) because of the complicated, interwoven evolutionary history of the D. quadramaculatus species complex. Detailed information on location, museum voucher number (if applicable), river drainage, and Genbank accession numbers are presented in Table 1.…”

“…Sequences were suitably similar to allow manual correction by eye following alignment without restrictions based upon the gap positions in the hypothesized loop regions of the 12S rRNA sequences. Desmognathus wrighti is currently the accepted basal member of Desmognathus (Titus and Larson 1996;Rissler and Taylor 2003;Jones et al 2006;Tilley et al 2008), and we used D. wrighti as the outgroup in all phylogenetic reconstructions.…”

“…Desmognathus folkertsi exhibited 4.29% divergence from populations of D. quadramaculatus, a level typical of sequence divergence between desmognathan species (Mead et al 2001). Many freshwater species, including amphibians and fishes, exhibit patterns of genetic diversity that can be explained by historical drainage connections (Mayden 1988;Burridge et al 2006;Jones et al 2006;Kozak et al 2006b). However, we found that there was as much genetic variance explained within a single stream as there was between streams or drainages.…”