A new genus of terraranas (Anura: Brachycephaloidea) from northern South America, with a systematic review of Tachiramantis

Abstract

Since the systematics of Terrarana frogs was overhauled in 2008, five new genera have been named, including Tachiramantis from the Venezuelan Coastal Range and adjacent parts of the Cordillera Oriental of Colombia and the Sierra de Perijá along the Venezuela–Colombia border. The discovery of Tachiramantis raises questions about the relationships of several species of Pristimantis in the nearby Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta previously hypothesized to be closely related to species now referred to Tachiramantis. To test the monophyly of Tachiramantis and the relationships among its species, we generated DNA sequences for 42 individuals, and, given the variable placement of Tachiramantis in previous studies, analysed them with DNA sequences from GenBank representing 25 genera of terraranas. In total, the final matrix included DNA sequences from 414 terminals, which we analysed using tree-alignment under the parsimony optimality criterion. To identify morphological synapomorphies and diagnostic characters, we also examined cranial osteology and axial skeleton morphology. Our analyses corroborated both the placement of Tachiramantis far from Pristimantis in Craugastoridae and the monophyly of Tachiramantis. We also found that six species currently referred to Pristimantis, all endemic to the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, comprise the sister clade of Tachiramantis. This highly endemic clade is both well-supported by molecular data and diagnosed from Tachiramantis by seven morphological synapomorphies, leading us to recognize it as a new genus.

http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:0036039F-F400-4CD4-A6AD-D3DD2B34BA4E

Key words:

• Craugastoridae
• morphology
• northern Andes of Colombia
• phylogeny
• Pristimantis
• taxonomy

Acknowledgements

LARS is grateful to the students of the Herpetology group from Universidad del Magdalena (Los Frolegts), Fundación Atelopus, the administrators of the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta Natural National Park (PNN, Caribbean territorial), and especially ‘los serranos’ (peasants and indigenous people) who have supported his research in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. We thank Liliana Saboyá for all her logistical support in making the July 2013 expedition to the SNSM a success, and we are grateful to Santiago Castroviejo-Fisher, David Gower, and an anonymous reviewer for their comments and their constructive criticism, all of which greatly improved the manuscript. Collection of amphibians in Colombia was authorized by the Ministerio de Ambiente, Vivienda y Desarrollo Territorial of Colombia and Corporación Autónoma Regional del Magdalena (Resolución 0425 de 2015

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14772000.2022.2123865.

Associate Editor: Dr David Gower

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this research was provided by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq Procs. 305234/2014-5, 306823/2017-9), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP Procs. 2012/10000-5, 2012/09401-5, 2015/14959-3, 2018/15425-0), and Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES/PNPD Proc. 2016.1.263.41.6). SA was supported by a PhD scholarship from COLCIENCIAS (grant #482 de 2008). LARS received support from the Conservation Leadership Program (Project ID: 02177014), Universidad del Magdalena, Universidad de los Andes (Internal Grant INV–2018-34–1281), and COLCIENCIAS (grant 757 de 2016).