A taxonomic revision of the Neotropical poison frog genus Ranitomeya (Amphibia: Dendrobatidae)
Brown, J.L. (Creator), Twomey, E. (Creator), Amézquita, A. (Creator), Souza, M.B. (Creator), Caldwell, J.P. (Creator), Lötters, S. (Creator), May, R. (Creator), Melo-Sampaio, P.R. (Creator), Mejía-Vargas, D. (Creator), Perez-Peña, P. (Creator), Pepper, M. (Creator), Poelman, E.H. (Creator), Sanchez-Rodriguez, M. (Creator), Summers, K. (Creator)
The Neotropical poison frog genus Ranitomeya is revised, resulting in one new genus, one new species, five synonymies and one species classified as nomen dubium. We present an expanded molecular phylogeny that contains 235 terminals, 104 of which are new to this study. Notable additions to this phylogeny include seven of the 12 species in the minuta group, 15 Ranitomeya amazonica, 20 R. lamasi, two R. sirensis, 30 R. ventrimaculata and seven R. uakarii. Previous researchers have long recognized two distinct, reciprocally monophyletic species groups contained within Ranitomeya, sensu Grant et al. 2006: the ventrimaculata group, which is distributed throughout much of the Amazon, and the minuta group of the northern Andes and Central America. We restrict Ranitomeya to the former group and erect a new genus, Andinobates Twomey, Brown, Amézquita & Mejía-Vargas gen. nov., for members of the minuta group. Other major taxonomic results of the current revision include the following: (i) A new species, Ranitomeya toraro Brown, Caldwell, Twomey, Melo-Sampaio & Souza sp. nov., is described from western Brazil. This species has long been referred to as R. ventrimaculata but new morphological and phylogenetic data place it sister to R. defleri. (ii) Examination of the holotype of R. ventrimaculata revealed that this specimen is in fact a member of what is currently referred to as R. duellmani, therefore, Dendrobates duellmani Schulte 1999 is considered herein a junior synonym of D. ventrimaculatus Shreve 1935 (= R. ventrimaculata). (iii) For the frogs that were being called R. ventrimaculata prior to this revision, the oldest available and therefore applicable name is R. variabilis. Whereas previous definitions of R. variabilis were restricted to spotted highland frogs near Tarapoto, Peru, our data suggest that this color morph is conspecific with lowland striped counterparts. Therefore, the definition of R. variabilis is greatly expanded to include most frogs which were (prior
Downloadable Article, English, 2011