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Relict groups of spiny frogs indicate Late Paleogene-Early Neogene trans-Tibet dispersal of thermophile faunal elements

Sylvia Hofmann, Daniel Jablonski, Spartak Litvinchuk, Rafaqat Masroor, Joachim Schmidt
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.18.430751
Sylvia Hofmann
1Centre of Taxonomy and Evolutionary Research, Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig, Bonn, Germany
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  • For correspondence: s.hofmann@leibniz-zfmk.de
Daniel Jablonski
2Department of Zoology, Comenius University in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia
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Spartak Litvinchuk
3Institute of Cytology, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia
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Rafaqat Masroor
4Zoological Sciences Division, Pakistan Museum of Natural History, Islamabad, Pakistan
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Joachim Schmidt
5Institute of Biosciences, General and Systematic Zoology, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany
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Abstract

Background The Himalaya-Tibet orogen (HTO) presents an outstanding geologically active formation that contributed to, and fostered, modern Asian biodiversity. However, our concepts of the historical biogeography of its biota are far from conclusive, as are uplift scenarios for the different parts of the HTO. Here, we revisited our previously published data set of the tribe Paini extending it with sequence data from the most western Himalayan spiny frogs Allopaa and Chrysopaa and using them as an indirect indicator for the paleoecological development of Tibet.

Methods We obtained sequence data of two mitochondrial loci (16S rRNA, COI) and one nuclear marker (Rag1) from Allopaa samples from Kashmir Himalaya as well as Chrysopaa sequence data from the Hindu Kush available from GenBank to complement our previous data set. A Maximum likelihood and dated Bayesian gene tree were generated based on the concatenated data set. To resolve the inconsistent placement of Allopaa, we performed different topology tests.

Results Consistent with previous results, the Southeast Asian genus Quasipaa is sister to all other spiny frogs. The results further reveal a basal placement of Chrysopaa relative to Allopaa and Nanorana with an estimated age of ca. 26 Mya. Based on the topology tests, the phylogenetic position of Allopaa as a sister clade to Chaparana seems to be most likely, resulting in a paraphyletic genus Nanorana and a separation from the latter clade around 20 Mya. Both, the placements of Chrysopaa and Allopaa support the presence of basal Paini lineages in the far north western part of the HTO, which is diametrically opposite end of the HTO with respect to the ancestral area of spiny frogs in Southeast Asia. These striking distributional patterns can be most parsimoniously explained by trans-Tibet dispersal during the late Oligocene (subtropical Chrysopaa) respectively early Miocene (warm temperate Allopaa). Within spiny frogs, only members of the monophyletic Nanorana+Paa clade are adapted to the colder temperate climates, indicating that high-altitude environments did not dominate in the HTO before ca. 15 Mya. Our results are consistent with fossil records suggesting that large parts of Tibet were characterized by subtropical to warm temperate climates at least until the early Miocene.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
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Posted February 18, 2021.
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Relict groups of spiny frogs indicate Late Paleogene-Early Neogene trans-Tibet dispersal of thermophile faunal elements
Sylvia Hofmann, Daniel Jablonski, Spartak Litvinchuk, Rafaqat Masroor, Joachim Schmidt
bioRxiv 2021.02.18.430751; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.18.430751
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Relict groups of spiny frogs indicate Late Paleogene-Early Neogene trans-Tibet dispersal of thermophile faunal elements
Sylvia Hofmann, Daniel Jablonski, Spartak Litvinchuk, Rafaqat Masroor, Joachim Schmidt
bioRxiv 2021.02.18.430751; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.18.430751

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