Educate me about Hyla orientalis

[Vlad Cioflec]

Hi,

I`ve read a few papers laltey, including this one - http://www.herpetofauna.at/aktuelles/Amphibien%20und%20Reptilien%20Europas%20und%20der%20angrenzenden%20Atlantischen%20Inseln_Feb12.pdf, and it seems now i`ve got two Hyla species in Romania.

Hyla orientalis was found in the Danube Delta / Black Sea Coast; i`ve herped that area quite a few times and seen a few tree frogs; so i should be able to tick this species right from my comfy armchair.



But what do you guys think? Is it a full species, or just a subspecies...

What is the european list you follow !?

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Well..... Allow me to oversimplify things.

We discussed the acceptance of Hyla orientalis and molleri in the SEH Taxonomy Commitee (apart from myself consisting of intelligent experts). It was concluded that we feel it is too early to tell. In the mean time, an additional paper has shown that molleri rather certainly deserves species status. As their mtDNA relatedness seems to cause that you cannot accept one without the other (OR you should treat them together as 1 species!), although they are geographically quite well apart, it seems hard to understand. I have heard about unpublished data suggesting orientalis and arborea are conspecific.

Regardless of the fact whether you accept species solely based on mtDNA or not, there is no data to elucidate the reproductive isolation and contact zone of orientalis and arborea.

Having said all that, I accept molleri but not orientalis at this moment in time. So, I don't think you have a new Romanian species and I'm not sure you ever will (in this case).

Among a list of other people (with some bias towards German-speaking experts), I was consulted (in German, practically ruling out replies from non-German speaking people, like most French, Italian and Spanish experts) by Dieter Glandt in his writing of the list in your link, Vlad. I disagree on quite a few other points with Dieter (Salamandra longirostris, Hydromantes over Speleomantes, Bufo spinosus, Bufo variabilis, siculus and balearicus, Pelophylax bergeri, cerigensis, the way to write the name of the hemiclone frogs, Emys trinacris, Darevskia pontica). I'd be happy to clarify case-specifically. I guess there's never a single truth .

Unfortunately, sometimes personal stuff gets in the way of reading the evidence, when e.g. a good scientist still makes a hasty decision and that person happens to be your friend. It may sound like a bad B-movie, but it happens.

On the other hand, it looks like we should (meaning rather: I will) accept the split of Psammodromus hispanicus into hispanicus, edwardsianus and occidentalis, but I (or someone) should still write a proposal for the SEH TC.

The SEH TC uses my 2010 Zootaxa paper as a baseline. I believe that since then we have only accepted 1 change so far - the Sicilian green toad is Bufo boulengeri siculus (as it is not conspecific with the other Italian green toads, but could be conspecific with those of N Africa).

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

And, BTW, if you accept orientalis, there is no evidence that there is arborea in Romania, if I'm not mistaken. Check the map in PDF-1751 in Mario's database. To split hairs to the extreme, to my knowledge, there is no Romanian sample that has been attributed to either species, but there are orientalis-attributed samples from the Black Sea coast of European Turkey and Ukraine.

[Vlad Cioflec]

Thank you very much for the answer Jeroen !
Boy, did i open up a can of worms with my request. Who knew?!.

To be honest, I kinda liked the fresh sound of Darevskia pontica, but if you say it`s a no go, well, no skin of my nose; it`s not about a new tick anyway.

So I`ll just stick to the list on your site then.

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Well, it's just my thoughts, Vlad. I'm not an expert, really, I just try to understand as much as I can and keep up. But thanks, anyway

In the case of Darevskia pontica, there is only some morphological analysis. If you accept every group of populations with distinct morphology as a species, you'll get a LOT of new species. I'd rather wait for molecular (mtDNA and nuclear) data. Also, I would have liked some samples from Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, ... in the analysis. (Less importantly, the English in that paper is rather poor.)
So, maybe but too soon.

[Vlad Cioflec]

So now Hyla orientalis has full species status i see:

http://www.hylawerkgroep.be/jeroen/inde ... d=47#anura

Well, time to cross the Carpathians to find the real deal arborea !

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

So now Hyla orientalis has full species status i see:

http://www.hylawerkgroep.be/jeroen/inde ... d=47#anura

Well, time to cross the Carpathians to find the real deal arborea !

The in the mean time well-substantiated elevation of molleri to species rank left no other option. The contact zone between arborea and orientalis remains largely (if not entirely?) unknown.

[Gabriel Martínez]

the Sicilian green toad is Bufo boulengeri siculus (as it is not conspecific with the other Italian green toads, but could be conspecific with those of N Africa).

Bufo boulengeri or Bufotes boulengeri???

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

the Sicilian green toad is Bufo boulengeri siculus (as it is not conspecific with the other Italian green toads, but could be conspecific with those of N Africa).

Bufo boulengeri or Bufotes boulengeri???

My answer of choice is also available through the link Vlad posted

[Mario Schweiger]

There is a new paper on European short-call Tree frogs:

Václav Gvozdík, b, Daniele Canestrelli, Mario García-París, Jiri Moravec, Giuseppe Nascetti, Ernesto Recuero, José Teixeira & Petr Kotlík (2015): Speciation history and widespread introgression in the European short-call tree frogs (Hyla arborea sensu lato, H. intermedia and H. sarda).- Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 83: 143–155.

Species distribution map out of that paper:

Abstract:

Code: Select all

European tree frogs (Hyla) characterized by short temporal parameters of the advertisement call form six genetically differentiated but morphologically cryptic taxa, H. arborea sensu stricto, H. orientalis and H. molleri from across Europe to western Asia (together referred to as H. arborea sensu lato), two putative taxa within H. intermedia (Northern and Southern) from the Italian Peninsula and Sicily, and H. sarda from Sardinia and Corsica. Here, we assess species limits and phylogenetic relationships within these ‘short-call tree frogs’ based on mitochondrial DNA and nuclear protein-coding markers. The mitochondrial and nuclear genes show partly incongruent phylogeographic patterns, which point to a complex history of gene flow across taxa, particularly in the Balkans. To test the species limits in the short-call tree frogs and to infer the species tree, we used coalescent-based approaches. The monophyly of H. arborea sensu lato is supported by the mtDNA as well as by the all-gene species tree. The Northern and Southern lineages of H. intermedia have been connected by nuclear gene flow (despite their deep mtDNA divergence) and should be treated as conspecific. On the contrary, the parapatric taxa within H. arborea sensu lato should be considered distinct species (H. arborea, H. orientalis, H. molleri) based on the coalescent analysis, although signs of hybridization were detected between them (H. arborea  H. orientalis; H. arborea  H. molleri). A mitochondrial capture upon secondary contact appears to explain the close mtDNA relationship between the geographically remote Iberian H. molleri and H. orientalis from around the Black Sea. Introgressive hybridization occurred also between the Balkan H. arborea and northern Italian H. intermedia, and between the Minor Asiatic H. orientalis and Arabian H. felixarabica (the latter belonging to a different acoustic group/clade). Our results shed light on the species limits in the European short-call tree frogs and show that introgression played an important role in the evolutionary history of the short-call tree frogs and occurred even between taxa supported as distinct species.

Full paper in db => PDF-7388

Mario