Publication details
Genetic diversity of Pelophylax species in south-western Balkans
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| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Water frogs of the genus Pelophylax comprise 12 species and three asexual hybrid taxa in the western Palearctic. The continental part of the Balkan Peninsula is inhabited by five species, whose distribution is poorly known. Therefore, we decided to shed more light to diversity of these relatively common and widely distributed, but still overlooked amphibians in the Balkans. During years 2014 – 2017 we collected a total of 219 Pelophylax individuals from 85 localities across western and south-western Balkan Peninsula. We analyzed sequences of the mitochondrial ND2 gene and nuclear fragment for serum albumin intron-1 (SAI). Based on nuclear data the most of analyzed specimens were recognized as P. ridibundus. This species was found in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, FYROM, Montenegro and Serbia. Rest of specimens were assigned into P. epeiroticus, P. bedriagae and P. shqipericus. While P. epeiroticus was found in Greece and southern Albania, P. bedriagae was collected from Bosnia and Herzegovina only. Two individuals assigned to P. shqipericus were collected from southern Montenegro and north-western Albania. Analysis of mitochondrial diversity recognized 73 haplotypes (Hd: 0.931), while the majority of them were assigned to P. ridibundus (63), eight and two haplotypes were recognized in P. epeiroticus and P. shqipericus, respectively. The largest haplotype diversity was observed in southern and south-eastern Albania. We also observed occasional discrepancies between nuclear and mitochondrial signal, which could be attributed either to interspecies introgression of mitochondrial DNA or incomplete lineage sorting. |