Climate as a driver of tropical insular diversity: comparative phylogeography of two ecologically distinctive frogs in Puerto Rico.

ABSTRACT: The effects of late Quaternary climate on distributions and evolutionary dynamics of insular species are poorly understood in most tropical archipelagoes. We used ecological niche models under past and current climate to derive hypotheses regarding how stable climatic conditions shaped genetic diversity in two ecologically distinctive frogs in Puerto Rico. Whereas the Mountain Coquí, Eleutherodactylus portoricensis, is restricted to montane forest in the Cayey and Luquillo Mountains, the Red-eyed Coquí, E. antillensis, is a habitat generalist distributed across the entire Puerto Rican Bank (Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, excluding St. Croix). To test our hypotheses, we conducted phylogeographic and population genetic analyses based on mitochondrial and nuclear loci of ea

SUBMITTER: Barker BS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4620057 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature