Unequal sisters – Past and potential future range development of Anatolian and Hyrcanian brown frogs

Niche Divergence at Intraspecific Level in the Hyrcanian Wood Frog, Rana pseudodalmatina: A Phylogenetic, Climatic, and Environmental Survey

“…Several studies have focused on the genetic structure, phylogeny, and habitat suitability of the Hyrcanian wood frog, R. pseudodalmatina (Najibzadeh et al, 2017(Najibzadeh et al, , 2018(Najibzadeh et al, , 2021Amiri et al, 2021;Kidov and Litvinchuk, 2021). However, the present study, using ENMs and multivariate niche analyses, for the first time, investigated environmental differentiation between the WRC and ERC of the Hyrcanian wood frog in the Hyrcanian forests.…”

“…The hypothesis focused on whether R. pseudodalmatina lineages preserved similar niches after divergent, which might reveal new details about Hyrcanian wood frog diversification. For this purpose, niche divergence or conservatism and its relationship to lineage diversification were explored based on recent phylogeographic understanding (Najibzadeh et al, 2018(Najibzadeh et al, , 2021Amiri et al, 2021). The results of this study found evidence of niche divergences between WRC and ERC that may have accelerated the evolution of clades of R. pseudodalmatina.…”

“…Occurrence records (N = 83) of the Hyrcanian wood frog, R. pseudodalmatina, provided across their distribution range within the Iranian Hyrcanian forests by different sources: (1) Najibzadeh et al (2018), Amiri et al (2021), Kidov and Litvinchuk (2021), Najibzadeh et al (2021); and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF 1 ) (Supplementary Table 1). We excluded the Azerbaijan data from our analysis due to a lack of genetic information to assess its occurrence in a particular clade in this distribution region.…”

“…We excluded the Azerbaijan data from our analysis due to a lack of genetic information to assess its occurrence in a particular clade in this distribution region. Therefore, we classified occurrences into two western and eastern regional clades (WRC and ERC hereafter) based on the previous phylogenetic analyses (Figure 1; Najibzadeh et al, 2018Najibzadeh et al, , 2021Amiri et al, 2021). We evaluated all occurrences equally, regardless of population size, and double-checked them using spreadsheets and GIS to search for duplication and possible georeferencing errors.…”

“…Following that, using environmental and occurrence data, we investigated whether these two clades occupy more similar environments than estimated based on background (Hyrcanian regions) environmental differentiation using niche overlap, niche equivalency, and niche similarity tests based on principal component analysis (PCA env ). The results of these studies, when combined with the phylogeographic relationships (Najibzadeh et al, 2018(Najibzadeh et al, , 2021Amiri et al, 2021), give a comprehensive and multidimensional perspective of niche variation and differentiation in the Hyrcanian wood frog.…”