Abstract
Landscape structures drive biogeographic patterns and population connectivity of animals distributed across diverse biotopes. Here, we provide a fresh insight on the impact of five landscape types in East Asia on the phylogeography and acoustic variability of the widespread Mongolian Toad, Strauchbufo raddei. For the first time, we reconstructed the biogeography of S. raddei over the species’ entire range throughout East Asia (N = 293; assembled up to 2,613 bp of concatenated CR-COI-12S rRNA-16S rRNA) using fossil-based molecular dating and genetic connectivity assessments. In addition, we addressed past population dynamics in relation to landscape types, and geographic variations in release calls for the clades occurring in the steppes of northern Mongolia and the Amur River basin (N = 147). Our results recovered two separate ancestors of S. raddei in East Asia, supporting a basal split between the northeastern and southern lineages in the Middle Miocene, c. 9.48–13.77 Mya. Ancestral range estimates suggested a Late Miocene radiation within the northeastern lineage, likely due to aridity-induced vicariance and dispersal from the central Asian steppes, c. 7.89 (5.25–11.50) Mya. The southern lineage emerged subsequently from glacial refugia, c. 6.84 (3.48–2.63) Mya, expanding northward and crossing the Gobi Desert and current-day Mongolia, c. 2.60 (1.15–3.72) Mya. At the exception of the pre-Tibetan Plateau clade, our reconstruction of migration trajectories highlighted the presence of effective gene flow across other landscapes, notably among the central and northeastern Chinese clades in the habitats defined as steppe, river basin and canyon. Significant variation in release calls between the clades in northern Mongolia and the Amur River Basin reflected the isolation between the two clades, and supported the presence of a northern refugium and post-glacial expansion of the southern lineage into northwestern Mongolia. In contrast with prior studies, our finding indicates that release calls can reflect phylogeographic patterns.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1007-1043 |
| Number of pages | 37 |
| Journal | Evolutionary Ecology |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors are grateful to Erdenetushig Purvee, Tumenkheslen Munkhsaikhan and Solongo Gansukh from the Mongolian State University of Education for their supports during sample collection. The authors also acknowledge the help provided by Yury Evgenyevich Dochevoy, Ye Inn Kim, Sungsik Kong, Yoonjung Yi, Kyungmin Kim and Desiree Andersen in the field. We thank Kevin R. Messenger for the use of Strauchbufo raddei photos in Figs. 4 and 7.
Funding Information:
This project was financially funded by Rural Development Administration of Korea grant (PJ015071) and Korea’s Environmental Industry and Technology Institute under a project entitled ‘Development of behavioural ecological methods for population regulation of invasive amphibians and reptiles’ (Step 2) under the grant number KEITI 2021002270001 to YJ. This project was also supported by the Foreign Youth Talent Program (QN2021014013L) from the Ministry of Science and Technology of People’s Republic of China to AB, and partially supported by the Dobretsov Cenozoic Geology Laboratory of the Geological Institute of the SB RAS (AAAA-A21-121011390004–6) to NAS.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Keywords
- Barriers
- Geographic variation
- Glacial refugia
- Gobi
- Migration
- Release calls