Landscape Genetics and Species Delimitation in the Andean Palm Rocket Frog (Aromobatidae, Rheobates)

The complex topography of the species-rich northern Andes creates heterogeneous environmental landscapes that are hypothesized to have promoted population fragmentation and diversification by processes such as vicariance or local adaptation. Previous phylogenetic work on the palm rocket frog (Anura: Aromobatidae: Rheobates spp.), endemic to midelevation forests of Colombia, suggested that valleys were important in promoting divergence between lineages. In this study, we first evaluated previous hypotheses of species-level diversity, then fitted an isolation-with-migration (IM) historical demographic model, and tested two landscape genetic models to explain genetic divergence within Rheobates: isolation by distance and isolation by environment. The data consisted of two mitochondrial and four nuclear genes from 24 samples covering most of the geographic range of the genus. Species delimitation by Bayesian Phylogenetics and Phylogeography recovered five highly divergent genetic lineages within Rheobates, among which few to no migrants are exchanged according to IM. We found that isolation by environment provided the only variable significantly correlated with genetic distances for both mitochondrial and nuclear genes, suggesting that local adaptation may have a role in driving the genetic divergence within this frog genus. Thus, genetic divergence in Rheobates may be driven more by variation among the local environments where these frogs live rather than by geographic distance.