title: Phylogeny of the Asian spiny frog tribe Paini (Family Dicroglossidae) sensu Dubois.
abstract: The anuran tribe Paini, family Dicroglossidae, is known in this group only from Asia. The phylogenetic relationships and often the taxonomic recognition of species are controversial. In order to stabilize the classification, we used approximately 2100 bp of nuclear (rhodopsin, tyrosinase) and mitochondrial (12S, 16S rRNA) DNA sequence data to infer the phylogenetic relationships of these frogs. Phylogenetic trees reconstructed using Bayesian inference and maximum parsimony methods supported a monophyletic tribe Paini. Two distinct groups (I,II) were recovered with the mtDNA alone and the total concatenated data (mtDNA+nuDNA). The recognition of two genera, Quasipaa and Nanorana, was supported. Group I, Quasipaa, is widespread east of the Hengduan Mountain Ranges and consists of taxa from relatively low elevations in southern China, Vietnam and Laos. Group II, Nanorana, contains a mix of species occurring from high to low elevation predominantly in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and Hengduan Mountain Ranges. The occurrence of frogs at high elevations appears to be a derived ecological condition. The composition of some major species groups based on morphological characteristics strongly conflicts with the molecular analysis. Some possible cryptic species are indicated by the molecular analyses. The incorporation of genetic data from type localities helped to resolve some of the taxonomic problems, although further combined analyses of morphological data from type specimens are required. The two nuDNA gene segments proved to be very informative for resolving higher phylogenetic relationships and more nuclear data should be explored to be more confident in the relationships.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, PR China.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Che
authors.forename: Jian-sheng
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Wei-wei
authors.initials: WW
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Robert W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Murphy
authors.forename: Theodore J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Papenfuss
authors.forename: Ming-yong
authors.initials: MY
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Ding-qi
authors.initials: DQ
authors.lastname: Rao
authors.forename: Pi-peng
authors.initials: PP
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Ya-ping
authors.initials: YP
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001001:Anura / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D001208:Asia; D001483:Base Sequence; D002467:Cell Nucleus / Q000235:genetics; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics; D030561:Databases, Nucleic Acid; D008928:Mitochondria / Q000235:genetics; D010802:Phylogeny
chemical_list: D004247:DNA