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Dryadobates lutzi Dryadobates bokermanniGrant, Lyra, Hofreiter, Preick, Barlow, Verdade & Rodrigues, 2025 |
Abstract
For four decades after 1967, four species of nurse frogs were recognized in the Atlantic Forest, namely Allobates alagoanus (Bokermann, 1967), A. capixaba (Bokermann, 1967), A. carioca (Bokermann, 1967), and A. olfersioides (A. Lutz, 1925), but in 2007 they were synonymized due to a lack of morphological differences. Although growing evidence from DNA and bioacoustics suggests that multiple species of nurse frogs inhabit the Atlantic Forest, their taxonomy has not been updated because populations at the four type localities had all vanished by the 1990s, making it impossible to collect tissues for DNA analysis and other data (e.g., vocalizations) from topotypic material. To overcome the lack of modern tissues, we employed museomics to obtain historical DNA from topotypic material of the four nominal species, which we analyzed together with data from extant populations from throughout the Atlantic Forest and Atlantic Forest enclaves within the Caatinga. We found that the Atlantic Forest nurse frogs comprise a well-supported clade of no fewer than 12 species that arrived in the Atlantic Forest via a single invasion from the Guiana Shield. We propose Dryadobates, gen. nov., for this clade, which is the sister group of all other allobatines. We consider the four nominal species to be valid, redescribe them as D. alagoanus, comb. nov., D. capixaba, comb. nov., D. carioca, comb. nov., and D. olfersioides, comb. nov., describe two sister species (D. bokermanni, sp. nov., and D. lutzi, sp. nov.) from southern Bahia, and summarize available information for the remaining six undescribed species. The type series of D. olfersioides comprises two species, so we designate a lectotype to clarify the application of the name. Dryadobates alagoanus is extant and broadly distributed, but D. capixaba, D. carioca, and D. olfersioides are presumed extinct, representing 50% of the nominal species of Dryadobates. These results provide a clear and consequential example of the essential role museomics and taxonomy play in understanding diversity loss and setting conservation priorities.
Keywords: Dendrobatidae, Mata Atlântica, Classification, Frogs, Genetics, Dryadobates, Museomics.
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| Dryadobates bokermanni, sp. nov., adult in life. Adult male holotype (MZUSP 160849, 16.7 mm SVL): A, dorsal view; B, ventral view. C, adult female topoparatype (MZUSP 160848, 17.8 mm SVL), ventral view. Photographs: T.G. |
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| Dryadobates lutzi, sp. nov., adult male paratypes in life. A, dorsal view (MZUSP 160544, 14.7 mm SVL; photograph: M.T.R.); B, ventral view (MZUESC 20074, 15.5 mm SVL; photograph: Omar Rojas Padilla). |
Dryadobates gen. nov.
Dryadobates bokermanni sp. nov.
Dryadobates lutzi sp. nov.
Dryadobates olfersioides comb. nov.
Dryadobates alagoanus , D. capixaba , D. carioca (removed from the synonymy of Dryadobates olfersioides)
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| Dryadobates alagoanus adult male in life (an individual in the series CHUFPE 1817–1823): A, dorsal view; B, ventral view. Photographs: Marcos Dubeux. |
Taran Grant, Mariana L. Lyra, Michael Hofreiter, Michaela Preick, Axel Barlow, Vanessa K. Verdade, Miguel Trefaut Rodrigues. 2025. Museomics and the Systematics of the Atlantic Forest Nurse Frogs (Dendrobatoidea: Aromobatidae: Allobatinae). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. 2025(472); 1-76. DOI: doi.org/10.1206/0003-0090.472.1.1 [6 May 2025]
https://hdl.handle.net/2246/7504
