Vast underestimation of Madagascar's biodiversity evidenced by an integrative amphibian inventory

By D. Vieites, Katharina C. Wollenberg, F. Andreone, J. Köhler, F. Glaw, M. Vences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009

713 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Amphibians are in decline worldwide. However, their patterns of diversity, especially in the tropics, are not well understood, mainly because of incomplete information on taxonomy and distribution. We assess morphological, bioacoustic, and genetic variation of Madagascar's amphibians, one of the first near-complete taxon samplings from a biodiversity hotspot. Based on DNA sequences of 2,850 specimens sampled from over 170 localities, our analyses reveal an extreme proportion of amphibian diversity, projecting an almost 2-fold increase in species numbers from the currently described 244 species to a minimum of 373 and up to 465. This diversity is widespread geographically and across most major phylogenetic lineages except in a few previously well-studied genera, and is not restricted to morphologically cryptic clades. We classify the genealogical lineages in confirmed and unconfirmed candidate species or deeply divergent conspecific lineages based on concordance of genetic divergences with other characters. This integrative approach may be widely applicable to improve estimates of organismal diversity. Our results suggest that in Madagascar the spatial pattern of amphibian richness and endemism must be revisited, and current habitat destruction may be affecting more species than previously thought, in amphibians as well as in other animal groups. This case study suggests that worldwide tropical amphibian diversity is probably underestimated at an unprecedented level and stresses the need for integrated taxonomic surveys as a basis for prioritizing conservation efforts within biodiversity hotspots.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2e3a923413f1cac0dc687a8718776c5b2fde953d

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Citations in the corpus

Molecular phylogeny of an endemic radiation of Cuban toads (Bufonidae: Peltophryne) based on mitochondrial and nuclear genes (2012, background): “taladai between localities DUABA and TAG-JAR suggests the existence of cryptic or ‘candidate’ species (Vences & Wake, 2007; Vieites et al., 2009; Padial et al., 2010).”
Integrative inventory of Bolivia’s lowland anurans reveals hidden diversity (2011, methodology): “…only the use of DNA barcoding (e.g. Fouquet et al. 2007a; Crawford et al. 2010) but also its combination with other data sets (e.g. morphology and – in the case of anurans – bioacoustics) to aid the species assessment during ‘integrative inventories’ (e.g. Vieites et al. 2009; Padial et al. 2010).”
Large‐scale DNA‐based survey of frogs in Amazonia suggests a vast underestimation of species richness and endemism (2020, background): “…2006; Krishnamurthy & Francis, 2012; Sukumaran & Knowles, 2017; Yu, Rao, Matsui, & Yang, 2017), such an approach can turn out to be reliable overall when applied to large assemblages of tropical frogs as confirmed by species delimitation based on integrative taxonomy (Vieites et al., 2009).”
Cold Code: the global initiative to DNA barcode amphibians and nonavian reptiles (2013, background): “Standardized genetic markers, such as DNA barcodes, foster the twin goals of identification and description by clustering groups of specimens within and across life stages, highlighting divergent lineages and facilitating comparison of newly collected material with global databases (Vieites et al. 2”
DNA barcoding Madagascar's amphibian fauna (2014, background): “As an island country hosting both a unique fauna and flora and suffering from a high rate of deforestation, Madagascar is ranked among the top biodiversity hotspots for conservation priority (Myers et al., 2000; Goodman and Benstead, 2005; Kremen et al., 2008; Vieites et al., 2009; Aymoz et al., 201”
Integrative taxonomy of Malagasy treefrogs: combination of molecular genetics, bioacoustics and comparative morphology reveals twelve additional species of Boophis (2010, methodology): “microtympanum group (see Glaw & Vences 2006; Vieites et al. 2009), and in this group, B.”
The integrative future of taxonomy (2010, methodology): “The bacteriological concept of candidate species [79] has recently been explored and applied to vertebrates for such units [8,63,80,81].”
Global emergence of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and amphibian chytridiomycosis in space, time, and host. (2009, background): “The most notable of these regions is the island of Madagascar, which contains up to 465 species of amphibian (117); the potential for Bd to extirpate this unique and megadiverse community has led to calls for a high degree of biosecurity to be implemented (5, 68).”
A large-scale phylogeny of Amphibia including over 2800 species, and a revised classification of extant frogs, salamanders, and caecilians. (2011, background): “…al., 2009), hemiphractid frogs (Wiens et al., 2007a), hylid frogs (Faivovich et al., 2005, 2010; Wiens et al., 2005b, 2010), terraranan frogs (Hedges et al., 2008; Heinicke et al., 2009), and salamanders (Kozak et al., 2009; Vieites et al., 2011; Wiens et al., 2005a, 2007b; Zhang and Wake, 2009a).”
Global patterns of amphibian phylogenetic diversity (2012, result): “Our results suggest that these areas have been successfully colonized by relatively few amphibian lineages, which have then radiated to unusually high species richness: for example the eleutherodactylids in the Caribbean; asterophryine microhylids and pelodryadine hylids in Australasia; and the mant”
Goodbye morphology? A paradigm shift in the delimitation of species in lichenized fungi (2011, neutral): “The continued interest in species delimitations has resulted in recently developed approaches used to investigate species boundaries using genetic data (Sites and Marshall 2004; Knowles and Carstens 2007; O’Brien et al. 2009; Vieites et al. 2009; Carstens and Dewey 2010; Yang and Rannala 2010).”