Diversification and biogeographical history of Neotropical plethodontid salamanders

The N eotropical bolitoglossine salamanders represent an impressive adaptive radiation, comprising roughly 40% of global salamander species diversity. Despite decades of morphological studies and molecular work, a robust multilocus phylogenetic hypothesis based on DNA sequence data is lacking for the group. We estimated species trees based on multilocus nuclear and mitochondrial data for all major lineages within the bolitoglossines, and used our new phylogenetic hypothesis to test traditional biogeographical scenarios and hypotheses of morphological evolution in the group. In contrast to previous phylogenies, our results place all C entral A merican endemic genera in a single clade and suggest that C entral A merica played a critical role in the early biogeographical history of the group. The large, predominantly M exican genus P seudoeurycea is paraphyletic, and analyses of the nuclear data place two lineages of P seudoeurycea as the sister group of B olitoglossa . Our phylogeny reveals extensive homoplasy in morphological characters, which may be the result of truncation or alteration of a shared developmental trajectory. We used our phylogenetic results to revise the taxonomy of the genus P seudoeurycea . © 2015 The Linnean Society of London