Journal
CONSERVATION GENETICS
Volume 12, Issue 5, Pages 1379-1385Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s10592-011-0229-6
Keywords
Archival DNA; Museum specimens; Rana fisheri; Rana chiricahuensis; Taxonomy; Conservation genetics
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Funding
- Las Vegas Valley Water District
- Blum Lab at Tulane University
- Arizona Research Laboratories
- University of Arizona Genetics Core for DNA sequencing
- Div Of Biological Infrastructure
- Direct For Biological Sciences [1126516] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Suggestions that the extinct Vegas Valley leopard frog (Rana fisheri = Lithobates fisheri) may have been synonymous with one of several declining species have complicated recovery planning for imperiled leopard frogs in southwestern United States. To address this concern, we reconstructed the phylogenetic position of R. fisheri from mitochondrial and nuclear sequence data obtained from century-old museum specimens. Analyses incorporating representative North American Rana species placed archival specimens within the clade comprising federally Threatened Chiricahua leopard frogs (Rana chiricahuensis = Lithobates chiricahuensis). Further analysis of Chiricahua leopard frogs recovered two diagnosable lineages. One lineage is composed of R. fisheri specimens and R. chiricahuensis near the Mogollon Rim in central Arizona, while the other encompasses R. chiricahuensis populations to the south and east. These findings ascribe R. chiricahuensis populations from the northwestern most portion of its range to a resurrected R. fisheri, demonstrating how phylogenetic placement of archival specimens can inform recovery and conservation plans, especially those that call for translocation, re-introduction, or population augmentation of imperiled species.
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