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Link to original content: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28673970
Phylogenomics reveals rapid, simultaneous diversification of three major clades of Gondwanan frogs at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary - PubMed Skip to main page content
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. 2017 Jul 18;114(29):E5864-E5870.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1704632114. Epub 2017 Jul 3.

Phylogenomics reveals rapid, simultaneous diversification of three major clades of Gondwanan frogs at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary

Yan-Jie Feng  1 , David C Blackburn  2 , Dan Liang  1 , David M Hillis  3 , David B Wake  4 , David C Cannatella  5 , Peng Zhang  6
Affiliations

Phylogenomics reveals rapid, simultaneous diversification of three major clades of Gondwanan frogs at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary

Yan-Jie Feng et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Frogs (Anura) are one of the most diverse groups of vertebrates and comprise nearly 90% of living amphibian species. Their worldwide distribution and diverse biology make them well-suited for assessing fundamental questions in evolution, ecology, and conservation. However, despite their scientific importance, the evolutionary history and tempo of frog diversification remain poorly understood. By using a molecular dataset of unprecedented size, including 88-kb characters from 95 nuclear genes of 156 frog species, in conjunction with 20 fossil-based calibrations, our analyses result in the most strongly supported phylogeny of all major frog lineages and provide a timescale of frog evolution that suggests much younger divergence times than suggested by earlier studies. Unexpectedly, our divergence-time analyses show that three species-rich clades (Hyloidea, Microhylidae, and Natatanura), which together comprise ∼88% of extant anuran species, simultaneously underwent rapid diversification at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary (KPB). Moreover, anuran families and subfamilies containing arboreal species originated near or after the KPB. These results suggest that the K-Pg mass extinction may have triggered explosive radiations of frogs by creating new ecological opportunities. This phylogeny also reveals relationships such as Microhylidae being sister to all other ranoid frogs and African continental lineages of Natatanura forming a clade that is sister to a clade of Eurasian, Indian, Melanesian, and Malagasy lineages. Biogeographical analyses suggest that the ancestral area of modern frogs was Africa, and their current distribution is largely associated with the breakup of Pangaea and subsequent Gondwanan fragmentation.

Keywords: Anura; amphibia; divergence time; nuclear genes; phylogeny.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Time-calibrated phylogenetic tree of frogs and the pattern of net diversification rate across time. (A) Evolutionary chronogram based on 95% nuclear genes and 20 fossil age constraints. Gray bars represent the 95% credibility interval of divergence time estimates. Divergence time estimates and corresponding 95% credibility intervals for all nodes are provided in Table S2. Note that the initial diversification of the three major frog clades: Hyloidea (blue), Microhylidae (purple), and Natatanura (green) took place simultaneously near the KPB (dashed red line). (B) Rate-through-time plot of extant frogs indicates an increase in diversification rate at the end of the Cretaceous.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Ancestral-area estimates for 69 terminal taxa (families, subfamilies, and genera) of extant frogs using the DEC+J model in BioGeoBEARS. Circles on nodes represent the set of possible ancestral areas, and the color is associated with the area legends. The probabilities are given next to circles for the most probable ancestral area. Circles without values indicate that the probability of the ancestral area is >99%. Three important landmass breakup events are indicated: (A) the break-up of Pangea with division into Laurasia and Gondwana in the Middle Jurassic coincident with the origin of neobatrachian frogs; (B) the separation of Africa and South America in the Early Cretaceous coincident with the divergence of Ranoidea and Hyloidea as well as between the African and New World pipids; and (C) the separation of the Seychelles and India in the Late Cretaceous coincident with the divergence between the Sooglossidae and Nasikabatrachidae. Anuran taxa that contain at least some arboreal species are indicated in green and a tree icon (we do not imply that the last common ancestor of each of these families was arboreal). Note that all clades containing arboreal frogs originated after the KPB.
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