https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3474-5505
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ABSTRACT
The occurrence of Alsodes coppingeri is confirmed in Argentina for the first time, from Santa Cruz Province, close to the Lago del Desierto. Specimens of this species were identified according to external morphology and DNA sequences. These new records in Argentina are at the same latitude than the type locality (Puerto Río Frío, Chile) about 100 km eastwards in a straight-line, but at the opposite side of the Andes mountain range and the Southern Continental Ice Fields. Five localities from Chile (Caleta Tortel, Canal Michel, Laguna Caiquenes, Puerto Yungay, and Villa O’Higgins) are around 100 km north from our records, in a lower region of the Andes located between the Northern and Southern Continental Ice Fields. This region with discontinuous permanent ice sheet-cover may have acted as a corridor for amphibian species that are currently distributed on both sides of the Andes range.
Acknowledgments
We thank Claudio Correa and Claudio Borteiro for their valuable comments on the manuscript, and to Ricardo Ortubay, Silvia Ortubay, Daniel Wegrzyn, Sergio Rosset, Clara Volonteri, and Ximena Navoa for their help in the fieldwork. We thank Boris Blotto and José Nuñez for the information provided, and Dirección de Fauna Silvestre of Santa Cruz Province for the permits (year 1997 and No 491755 /16).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Author contributions
DAB, CAÚ, LC, and NGB contributed equally in all stage of this manuscript.