Abstract
The green and golden bell frog (Litoria aurea) has a widespread distribution along the south-east coast of Australia. The species range, however, is highly fragmented and remaining populations are predominately isolated and restricted to the coastline. Previously, the range extended further inland and the species was considered common. Here we report a study designed to identify the phylogeographic and conservation genetic parameters of L. aurea. Mitochondrial DNA sequences were examined from 263 individuals sampled from 26 locations using both phylogenetic and population analyses. Despite a general consensus that amphibians are highly structured we found no phylogeographic divisions within the species, however, there was significant structure amongst extant populations (F ST=0.385). Patterns of haplotype relatedness, high haplotypic diversity (mean h=0.547) relative to low nucleotide diversity (mean π=0.003) and mismatch distribution analysis supported a Pleistocene expansion hypothesis with continued restricted dispersal and gene flow. We conclude that the genetic structure of the species may permit ‘well managed’ intervention to mediate gene flow amongst isolated populations and provide some guidelines for the implementation of such conservation strategies.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Althoff DM, Pellmyr O (2002) Examining genetic structure in a bogus yucca moth: a sequential approach to phylogeography. Evolution 56:1632–1643
Arèvalo E, Davis SK, Sites JW (1994) Mitochondrial DNA sequence divergence and phylogenetic relationships among eight chromosome races of the Sceloprous grammicus complex (Phrynosomatidae) in central Mexico. Syst Biol 43:387–418
Austin JD, Lougheed SC, Neidrauer L, Check AA, Boag PT (2002) Cryptic lineages in a small frog: the post-glacial history of the spring peeper, Pseudacris crucifer (Anura: Hylidae). Mol Phylogenet Evol 25:316–329
Avise JC (2000) Phylogeography: the history and formation of species. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Barrows TT, Stone JO, Fifield LK, Cresswell RG (2001) Late Pleistocene glaciation of the Kosciusko Massif, snowy mountains, Australia. Quatern Res 55:179–189
Bos DH, Sites JWJ (2001) Phylogeography and conservation genetics of the columbia spotted tree frog (Rana luteiventris; Amphibia, ranidae). Mol Ecol 10:1499–1513
Bowler JM (1982) Aridity in the late tertiary and quaternary of Australia. In: Baker R, Greenslade PJM (eds) Evolution of the␣flora and fauna of arid Australia. Peacock, Adelaide, pp 35–45
Burns EL, Eldridge MDB, Houlden BA (2004) Microsatellite variation and population structure in a declining Australian Hylid Litoria aurea. Mol Ecol 13:1745–1757
Christy MT (2001) The ecology and conservation biology of the green and golden bell frog Litoria aurea (Lesson 1829) (Anura: Hylidae). PhD Thesis, School of Biological Sciences. University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Cracraft J (1991) Patterns of diversification within continental biotas: hierarchial congruence among the areas of endemism of Australian vertebrates. Aust Syst Bot 4:211–227
Donnellan SC, McGuigan K, Knowles R, Mahony M, Moritz C (1999) Genetic evidence for species boundaries in frogs of the Litoria citropa species-group (Anura: Hylidae). Aust J Zool 47:275–293
Eizirik E, Kim J-H, Menotti-Raymond M, Crawshaw Jr PG, O’Brien S, Johnson E (2001) Phylogeography, population history and conservation genetics of jaguars (Pathera onca, Mammalia, Felidae). Mol Ecol 10:65–79
Excoffier L, Smouse PE (1994) Using allele frequencies and geographic subdivision to reconstruct gene genealogies within a species: molecular variance parsimony. Genetics 136:343–359
Excoffier L, Smouse PE, Quattro JM (1992) Analysis of molecular variance inferred from metric distances among DNA haplotypes: application to human mitochondrial DNA restriction data. Genetics 131:479–491
Felsenstein J (1985) Confidence limits on phylogenies: an approach using the boostrap. Evolution 39:783–791
Fitch WM (1971) Toward defining the course of evolution: minimum change for a specified tree topology. Syst Zool 20:406–416
Frankham R (1997) Do Island populations have less genetic variation than mainland populations? Heredity 78:311–327
Fu Y-X (1997) Statistical tests of neutrality of mutations against population growth, hitchhiking and background selection. Genetics 147:915–925
Godoy JA, Negro JJ, Hiraldo F, Donazar JA (2004) Phylogeography, genetic structure and diversity in the endangered bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus, L.) as revealed by mitochondrial DNA. Mol Ecol 13:371–390
Goldingay RL (1996) The green and golden bell frog Litoria aurea – from riches to ruins: conservation of a formerly common species. Aust Zool 30:248–256
Hasegawa M, Kishino H, Yano T (1985) Dating of the human-ape splitting by a molecular clock of mitochondrial DNA. J Mol Evol 21:160–174
Hedrick PW (2001) Conservation genetics: where are we now? TREE 16:629–636
Hewitt G (2000) The genetic legacy of the Quaternary ice ages. Nature 405:907–913
James CH, Moritz C (2000) Intraspecific phylogeography in the sedge frog Litoria fallax (Hylidae) indicates pre-Pleistocene vicariance of an open forest species from eastern Australia. Mol Ecol 9:349–358
Johnson MS (2000) Measuring and interpreting genetic structure to minimize the genetic risks of translocations. Aquacult Res 31:133–143
Joseph L, Moritz C, Hugall A (1995) Molecular support for vicariance as a source of diversity in rainforest. Proc R Soc Lond Ser B 260:177–182
Joseph L, Wilke T, Alpers D (2002) Reconciling genetic expectations from host specificity with historical population dynamics in an avian brood parasite, Hosrefield’s Bronze-Cuckoo Chalcites basalis of Australia. Mol Ecol 11:829–837
Kemp EM (1981) Tertiary palaeogeography and the evolution of Australian climate. In: Keast A (eds) Ecological biogeography in Australia. The Hague, Dr W. Junk, Boston, London, pp␣33–49
Keogh SJ, Scott IAW, Fitzgerald M, Shine R (2003) Molecular Phylogeny of the Australian venomous snake genus Hoplocephalus (Serpentes, Elapidae) and conservation genetics of the threatened H. stephensii. Cons Gen 4:57–65
Kershaw AP (1981) Quaternary vegetation and environments. In: Keast A (eds) Ecological biogeography in Australia. The Hague, Dr W. Junk, Boston, London, pp 81–102
Kimura M (1980) A simple method for estimating evolutionary rate of base substitutions through comparative studies of nucleotide sequences. J Mol Evol 16:111–120
Macey JR, Schulte JA, Larson A, Fang Z, Wang Y, Tuniyev BS, Papenfuss TJ (1998) Phylogenetic relationships of toads in the Bufo bufo species group from the Eastern escarpment of the Tibetan Plateau: a case of vicariance and dispersal. Mol Phylogenet Evol 9:80–87
Maddison DR (1991) The discovery and importance of multiple islands of most-parsimonious trees. Syst Zool 40:315–328
Maddison WP, Maddison DR (2000) MacClade 4: analysis of phylogeny and character evolution. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Mass, USA
Mahony M, Knowles R, Forster R, Donnellan S (2001) Systematics of the Litoria citropa (Anuran: Hylidae) complex in Northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland, Australia, with the description of a new species. Rec Aust Mus 53:37–48
Mantel N (1967) The detection of disease clustering and a generalized regression approach. Cancer Res 27:209–220
Markgraf V, McGlone M, Hope G (1995) Neogene paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic change in southern temperate ecosystems – a southern perspective. TREE 10:143–147
McGuigan K, McDonald K, Parris K, Moritz C (1998) Mitochondrial DNA diversity and historical biogeography of a wet forest-restricted frog (Litoria pearsoniana) from mid-east Australia. Mol Ecol 7:175–186
McKinnon GE, Jordon GJ, Vaillancourt RE, Steane DA, Potts BM (2004) Glacial refugia and reticulate evolution: the case of the Tasmanian eucalypts. Phil Trans R Soc Lond Ser B 359:275–284
Moritz C (1994a) Applications of mitochondrial DNA analysis in conservation: a critical review. Mol Ecol 3:401–411
Moritz C (1994b) Defining ‘Evolutionary Significant Units’ for conservation. TREE 9:373–375
Moritz C (1999) Conservation units and translocations: strategies for conserving evolutionary processes. Hereditas 130:217–228
Nicholls JA, Austin JJ (2005) Phylogeography of an east Australian wet-forest bird, the satin bowerbird (Ptilonorchynchus violaceus), derived from mtDNA, and its relationship morphology. Mol Ecol 14:1485–1496
Nix H (1982) Environmental determinants of biogeography and evolution in Terra Australia. In: Barker WR, Greenslade PJM (eds) Evolution of the flora and fauna of arid Australia. Peacock Publications in association with the Australian Systematic Botany Society and ANZAAS, South Australian Division Frewville, South Australia, pp 47–66
NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (2002) Green and golden bell frog Litoria Aurea (Lesson 1829) draft recovery plan. NSW NPWS, Hurstville
Palo JU, Schmeller DS, Laurila A, Primmer CR, Kuzmins SL, Merila J (2004) High degree of population subdivision in a widespread amphibian. Mol Ecol 13:2631–2644
Posada D, Crandall KA (1998) MODELTEST: testing the model of DNA substitution. Bioinformatics 14:817–818
Pyke GH, White AR (2001) A review of the biology of the green and golden bell frog Litoria aurea. Aust Zool 31:563–598
Pyke GH, White AW, Bishop PJ, Waldman B (2002) Habitat-use by the green and golden bell frog Litoria aurea in Australia and New Zealand. Aust Zool 32:12–31
Raymond M, Rousset F (1995a) An exact test for population differentiation. Evolution 1280–1283
Raymond M, Rousset F (1995b) GENEPOP (Version 1.2): population genetics software for exact tests and ecumenicism. J Hered 86:248–249
Rogers AR (1995) Genetic evidence for a Pleistocene population explosion. Evolution 49:608–615
Rogers AR, Harpending H (1992) Population growth makes waves in the distribution of pairwise differences. Mol Biol Evol 9:552–569
Ryder OA (1986) Species conservation and systematics: the dilemma of subspecies. TREE 1:9–10
Sambrook E, Fritsch F, Maniatis T (1989) Molecular cloning: a laboratory manual, 2nd edn. Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory Press, New York
Schauble CS, Moritz C (2001) Comparative phylogeography of two open forest frogs from eastern Australia. Biol J Linn Soc 74:157–170
Schauble CS, Moritz C, Slade RW (2000) A molecular phylogeny for the frog genus Limnodynastes (Anura: Myobatrachidae). Mol Phylogenet Evol 16:378–391
Schneider CJ, Cunningham M, Moritz C (1998) Comparative phylogeography and the history of endemic vertebrates in the Wet Tropics rainforests of Australia. Mol Ecol 7:487–498
Schneider S, Excoffier L (1999) Estimation of past demographic parameters from the distribution of pairwise distances when the mutation rates vary among sites: application to human mitochondrial DNA. Genetics 152:1097–1089
Schneider S, Roessli D, Excoffier L (2000) Arlequin, version 2.0: a software for population genetic data analysis. Genetics and Biometry Laboratory, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Stamatis C, Triantafyllidis A, Moutou KA, Mamuris Z (2004) Mitochondrial DNA variation in Northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean populations of Norway lobster, Nephrops norvegicus. Mol Ecol 13:1377–1390
Storfer A (1999) Gene flow and endangered species translocations: a topic revisited. Biol Conserv 87:173–180
Swofford DL (1998) PAUP *: phylogenetic analysis using parsimony (* and other methods). Sinauer Associates Inc. Sunderland, USA
Tajima F (1989a) Statistical method for testing the neutral mutation hypothesis by DNA polymorphism. Genetics 123:585–595
Tajima F (1989b) The effect of change in population size on DNA polymorphism. Genetics 123:597–601
Tamura K, Nei M (1993) Estimation of the number of nucleotide substitutions in the control region of mitochondrial DNA in humans and chimpanzees. Mol Biol Evol 10:512–526
White AW, Pyke GH (1996) Distribution and conservation status of the green and golden bell frog Litoria aurea in New South Wales. Aust Zool 30:177–189
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Arthur White, Ross Wellington, Graham Pyke, Garry Daly, Andrew Hamer, Simon Lane, Mike Mahony, Rod Pietsch, Scott Filmer, Rebecca Rudd, Candice Webb, Dion Hobcroft, Kerry Darcovich, Glenn Muir and many field volunteers and property owners for aid in the collection of tissue samples. Financial support for this project was provided by University of New South Wales-URSP, Zoological Parks Board of New South Wales, Roads and Traffic Authority, ARC small grant, Mary Ethel Read research Grant, the Joyce W. Vickery Scientific Research Fund, and the W.V. Scott Foundation. The study was conducted under University of New South Wales Animal Care and Ethics Committee approval (ACEC 99/39), Zoological Parks Board of NSW approval (ACEC 3a/06/99), New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service scientific permits (A2608, B2022), State Forests of New South Wales special purpose permit (05449) and Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment scientific permit (10000851).
This study was conducted as part of the PhD research of Emma Burns on phylogeography and conservation genetics of green and golden bell frogs (Litoria aurea) in Australia. The authors are primarily interested in the application of genetics in conservation and ecology.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Burns, E.L., Eldridge, M.D. ., Crayn, D.M. et al. Low Phylogeographic Structure in a Wide Spread Endangered Australian Frog Litoria aurea (Anura: Hylidae). Conserv Genet 8, 17–32 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-006-9143-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-006-9143-8