The Validity of Red Knobby Newt (Tylototriton shanjing) Species Status Based on Mitochondrial Cyt b Gene
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Abstract
The delimitation between Tylototriton shanjing and T. verrucosus was not clear. Forty individuals of T. verrucosus and T. shanjing were collected from fourteen localities in Southwest China and 753?bp of partial mitochondrial Cyt b gene sequence were sequenced. Molecular phylogenetic trees of T. verrucosus group were reconstructed using neighbor-joining, maximum parsimony and Bayesian inference methods. Pairwise sequence comparisons to determine the amount of variation were performed using MEGA 3.0 software. According to the results of phylogeny analysis and Kimura 2-parameter distance, the species validities were evaluated. The results showed that: (1) the T. shanjing did not form a monophyletic group; (2) the genetic distance was low between T. shanjing and T. verrucosus, it was only 1.2% on average. Therefore, T. shanjing as a valid species is not supported and can be argued to be a synonym of T. verrucosus. According to our phylogenetic tree, the genetic divergences and geographic distribution, T. verrucosus' distribution in the Yunnan Province can be divided into three geographic groups, i.e. the Pianma group, the Middle and West Yunnan group and the Southeast Yunnan group.
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