0000000000418806
AUTHOR
Spartak N. Litvinchuk
Molecular phylogenetics and historical biogeography of the west-palearctic common toads (Bufo bufo species complex)
In most pan-Eurasiatic species complexes, two phenomena have been traditionally considered key processes of their cladogenesis and biogeography. First, it is hypothesized that the origin and development of the Central Asian Deserts generated a biogeographic barrier that fragmented past continuous distributions in Eastern and Western domains. Second, Pleistocene glaciations have been proposed as the main process driving the regional diversification within each of these domains. The European common toad and its closest relatives provide an interesting opportunity to examine the relative contributions of these paleogeographic and paleoclimatic events to the phylogeny and biogeography of a wide…
Fossorial but widespread: the phylogeography of the common spadefoot toad (Pelobates fuscus), and the role of the Po Valley as a major source of genetic variability.
International audience; Pelobates fuscus is a fossorial amphibian that inhabits much of the European plain areas. To unveil traces of expansion and contraction events of the species' range, we sequenced 702 bp of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. To infer the population history we applied phylogeographical methods, such as nested clade phylogeographical analysis (NCPA), and used summary statistics to analyse population structure under a neutral model of evolution. Populations were assigned to different drainage systems and we tested hypotheses of explicit refugial models using information from analysis of molecular variance, nucleotide diversity, effective population size estimation, NCP…