From Gondwana to the Yellow Sea, evolutionary diversifications of true toads Bufo sp. in the Eastern Palearctic and a revisit of species boundaries for Asian lineages
Abstract
Taxa with vast distribution ranges often display unresolved phylogeographic structures and unclear taxonomic boundaries resulting into hidden diversity. This hypothesis-driven study reveals the evolutionary history of Bufonidae, covering the phylogeographic patterns found in Holarctic bufonids from the West Gondwana to the phylogenetic taxonomy of Asiatic true toads in the Eastern Palearctic. We used an integrative approach relying on fossilised birth-death calibrations, population dynamic, gene-flow, species distribution and species delimitation modelling to resolve the biogeography of the clade and highlight cryptic lineages. We verified the near-simultaneous Miocene radiations within Western and Eastern Palearctic Bufo, c. 14.49 - 10.00 Mya, temporally matching with the maximum dust outflows in Central Asian deserts. Contrary to earlier studies, we demonstrated that the combined impacts of long dispersal and ice-age refugia equally contributed to the current genetic structure of Bufo in East Asia. Our findings reveal a climate-driven adaptation in septentrional Eastern Asian Bufo, explained its range shifts towards northern latitudes. We resolve species boundaries within the Eastern Palearctic Bufo, and redefine the taxonomic and conservation units of the northeastern species: B. sachalinensis and its subspecies.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are either included in the manuscript and supporting files, or submitted online depositories. All Sequences generated in present study deposited to the Genbank database [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ 927 genbank/] under the accession number MW081664- MW081847 (CR), MW467646-MW467777 (ND2), MW489915-MW489964 (POMC), MW489986-MW490035 (RAG-1), MW507752-MW507780 (Rho). Input files in the form of BEAST XML generated for all molecular dating analyses and species delimitation modelling are available from the Mendeley Data repository http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/wdtw6kn2t4.1 (Othman et al., 2021).
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Korean Environmental Industry and Technology Institute (KEITI 2017002270003)
- Yikweon Jang
Foreign Youth Talent Program (QN2021014013L)
- Amaël Borzée
Russian Foundation of Basic Research (20-04-00918)
- Spartak N Litvinchuk
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Sampling in the Republic of Korea were collected in 2017 under the Ministerial authorisation number 2017-16, and the samples from Jirisan National Park were collected under the Ministerial authorisation number 2019-01. Samples from the People's Republic of China were collected under the authorisation provided by Nanjing Forestry University. IACUC permit is not required for the in-situ experiment in this study, in accord to the rules of Ewha Woman's University Institutional Biosafety Committee
Copyright
© 2022, Othman et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 1,620
- views
-
- 328
- downloads
-
- 20
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Ecology
Bathymodioline mussels dominate deep-sea methane seep and hydrothermal vent habitats and obtain nutrients and energy primarily through chemosynthetic endosymbiotic bacteria in the bacteriocytes of their gill. However, the molecular mechanisms that orchestrate mussel host–symbiont interactions remain unclear. Here, we constructed a comprehensive cell atlas of the gill in the mussel Gigantidas platifrons from the South China Sea methane seeps (1100 m depth) using single-nucleus RNA-sequencing (snRNA-seq) and whole-mount in situ hybridisation. We identified 13 types of cells, including three previously unknown ones, and uncovered unknown tissue heterogeneity. Every cell type has a designated function in supporting the gill’s structure and function, creating an optimal environment for chemosynthesis, and effectively acquiring nutrients from the endosymbiotic bacteria. Analysis of snRNA-seq of in situ transplanted mussels clearly showed the shifts in cell state in response to environmental oscillations. Our findings provide insight into the principles of host–symbiont interaction and the bivalves' environmental adaption mechanisms.
-
- Ecology
Predator-prey arms races have led to the evolution of finely tuned disguise strategies. While the theoretical benefits of predator camouflage are well established, no study has yet been able to quantify its consequences for hunting success in natural conditions. We used high-resolution movement data to quantify how barn owls (Tyto alba) conceal their approach when using a sit-and-wait strategy. We hypothesized that hunting barn owls would modulate their landing force, potentially reducing noise levels in the vicinity of prey. Analysing 87,957 landings by 163 individuals equipped with GPS tags and accelerometers, we show that barn owls reduce their landing force as they approach their prey, and that landing force predicts the success of the following hunting attempt. Landing force also varied with the substrate, being lowest on man-made poles in field boundaries. The physical environment, therefore, affects the capacity for sound camouflage, providing an unexpected link between predator-prey interactions and land use. Finally, hunting strike forces in barn owls were the highest recorded in any bird, relative to body mass, highlighting the range of selective pressures that act on landings and the capacity of these predators to modulate their landing force. Overall, our results provide the first measurements of landing force in a wild setting, revealing a new form of motion-induced sound camouflage and its link to hunting success.