Aegean, Cyclades & Anatolian Pelophylax taxonomy

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Aegean, Cyclades & Anatolian Pelophylax taxonomy

Postby Daniel Kane » Wed Aug 22, 2012 7:20 pm

I was just wondering what the most recent suggestions as to which species of water frog inhabit this region are. I have read about the grouping of P. cerigensis from Karpathos with frogs found on Rhodes, but there seems to be some doubt as to whether this decision is backed by by reliable data (mtDNA, nuclear DNA..) so, as I understand it, there is not yet a definitive answer.

In Speybroeck, J., Beukema, W. & Crochet, P. A. (2010). A tentative species list of the European herpetofauna (Amphibia and Reptilia) - an update. Zootaxa, 2492. 1-27 the authors "recognize, for the time being, a single species of Middle East water frog". I assume this is reserved judgement until further research is done to clarify the taxonomy of the frogs from this region. In the two years which have elapsed since publication of this paper does anyone here know of any more recent work suggesting the distribution of frogs around the Aegean (P. cerigensis, P. bedriagae), & Cyclades (P. sp from Milos)? As in which species are recognised and where they occur? Or do we still need to wait for an answer to this (difficult & extensive) question? ;)
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Re: Aegean, Cyclades & Anatolian Pelophylax taxonomy

Postby Jeroen Speybroeck » Thu Aug 23, 2012 7:14 am

Don't really know what "reserved judgement" means, but our decision is/was based on data, not some sort of sentiment, maintaining monophyletic taxa + ! was confirmed => http://vipersgarden.at/PDF_files/PDF-2843.pdf
I have sent the final version of the paper to Mario, so he can replace it & you can see the tree properly.

You're not going to get the answer you might want, that's for sure. Rhodes frogs never have been fully proven to be cerigensis, yet (more importantly) the trees of Lymberakis et al. and Akin et al. showed that cerigensis falls within the complex polytomy of bedriagae s.l., thus has to be cancelled (for now). Hints of a new species from Milos have been questioned by unpublished data from a research lab from Antwerp University, showing them to be fairly undivergent from (Greek) mainland frogs. Plötner (should check ref) has (since 2010) argued for maintaining kurtmuelleri, I believe.

That's about what leaps to my mind...
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Re: Aegean, Cyclades & Anatolian Pelophylax taxonomy

Postby Mario Schweiger » Thu Aug 23, 2012 10:01 am

PDF-2843 has been updated yet ;)

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Please visit also my personal Herp-site vipersgarden.at
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Re: Aegean, Cyclades & Anatolian Pelophylax taxonomy

Postby Daniel Kane » Thu Aug 23, 2012 10:02 am

OK, thanks for that Jeroen. Fig. 1 in Akin et. al. looks like the sort of thing I was after, but I accept that it may be some more time before the ((sub)species) identity of frogs from this region is settled.
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