Fifteen shades of green: The evolution of Bufotes toads revisited

Publication date: Available online 11 September 2019Source: Molecular Phylogenetics and EvolutionAuthor(s): Christophe Dufresnes, Glib Mazepa, Daniel Jablonski, Ricardo Caliari Oliveira, Tom Wenseleers, Dmytro A. Shabanov, Markus Auer, Raffael Ernst, Claudia Koch, Héctor E. Ramírez-Chaves, Kevin Patrick Mulder, Evgeniy Simonov, Arthur Tiutenko, Dmytro Kryvokhyzha, Paul Louis Wennekes, Oleksandr I. Zinenko, Oleksiy V. Korshunov, Awadh M. Al-Johany, Evgeniy A. Peregontsev, Rafaqat MasroorAbstractThe radiation of Palearctic green toads (Bufotes) holds great potential to evaluate the role of hybridization in phylogeography at multiple stages along the speciation continuum. With fifteen species representing three ploidy levels, this model system is particularly attractive to examine the causes and consequences of allopolyploidization, a prevalent yet enigmatic pathway towards hybrid speciation. Despite substantial efforts, the evolutionary history of this species complex remains largely blurred by the lack of consistency among the corresponding literature. To get a fresh, comprehensive view on Bufotes phylogeography, here we combined genome-wide multilocus analyses (RAD-seq) with an extensive compilation of mitochondrial, genome size, niche modelling, distribution and phenotypic (bioacoustics, morphometrics, poison composition) datasets, representing hundreds of populations throughout Eurasia. We provide a fully resolved nuclear phylogeny for Bufotes and highlight exceptional cy...
Source: Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution - Category: Molecular Biology Source Type: research