Non-monophyly of Rhacophorus rhodopus, Theloderma and Philautus albopunctatus Inferred from Mitochondrial 16S rRNA Gene Sequences
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Abstract
Mitochondrial gene fragments of 16S rRNA gene of four species (Rhacophorus rhodopus, R. reinwardtii, Philautus albopunctatus and P. rhododiscus) from 11 populations were sequenced in this study. Homologous sequences of R. bipunctatus, Theloderma asperum, T. corticale and Buergeria japonica were obtained by screening the GenBank database. After excluding all gaps and ambiguous positions, aligned sequences were 500 bp in length with 115 variable sites and 92 parsimony-informative sites. Using B. japonica as an outgroup, phylogenetic relationships were analyzed using Bayesian inference, maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood methods. Our results indicated that neither of R. rhodopus and P. albopunctatus were monophyletic at the species level. The population of R. rhodopus from Hainan Island was more close to R. bipunctatus than to populations of R. rhodopus from Yunnan Province. Furthermore, the populations of R. rhodopus from Yunnan Province can be divided into two main lineages. Theloderma corticale and P. rhododiscus were clustered together and T. asperum was nested in P. albopunctatus. We considered that P. albopunctatus Liu and Hu, 1962, was the synonymy of T. asperum Boulenger, 1886, and suggested removing P. rhododiscus from Philautus into the genus Theloderma.
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