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Introduction
Publications
Publications (1,154)
Currently, the name Gastrotheca splendens is applied to Bolivian montane forest populations of marsupial frogs that have been associated with G. marsupiata and its allies in the past. Because its comparatively large size evoked taxonomic doubts, we re-examined the holotype of Hyla splendens Schmidt, 1857 and extracted and sequenced archival DNA to...
A recent revision of the anacondas (Serpentes: Boidae: Eunectes), with the description of a new species of green anaconda, generated extensive publicity, but also provoked considerable controversy due to inadequacies of the evidence used and errors in nomenclature. We here use the case of this problematic publication to: (i) highlight common issues...
The Lygodactylus tolampyae complex includes several deep genetic lineages of small diurnal geckos from the West and North West of Madagascar whose taxonomy is largely unsolved. We sequenced DNA fragments of one mitochondrial and four nuclear-encoded genes for up to 70 samples across the entire known range of these geckos. We find as many as 11 mito...
We describe a new frog species that is the sibling of Pristimantis reichlei. These two sister species inhabit the Amazonian lowlands and adjacent foothills of the Andes, from central Bolivia to central Peru. Pristimantis reichlei occurs from central Bolivia to southern Peru (Alto Purús National Park), while the new species occurs from northern Boli...
Traditional methods of phylogenetic reconstruction and species delimitation may be impeded by frequent hybridization among lineages. In this study, we conducted phylogenetic and clustering analyses of ddRAD genomic data on the entire genus Salamandra, which includes six species and over 25 subspecies of terrestrial salamanders. We expanded previous...
The Gephyromantis moseri complex, classified in the mantellid subgenus Duboimantis, currently contains one species of frog, G. moseri (Glaw & Vences, 2002) from the Andasibe area in the Northern Central East of Madagascar, as well as several genetically divergent populations from the North East that have been provisionally assigned to the species....
The area around the Malagasy village of Andasibe, which includes Analamazaotra-Mantadia National Park as well as other protected areas, is characterized by very species-rich and well-studied communities of animals and plants, but new species are still regularly discovered. Three species of phytotelmic frogs of the subgenus Pandanusicola in the genu...
We studied the taxonomic status of a population of Pristimantis from the southern Cordillera Azul, Departamento Huánuco, central Peru. A phylogenetic analysis based on the mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene revealed that it represents a lineage within the Pristimantis lacrimosus species group, being the closest relative of a species of uncertain taxonomic...
We re-evaluate the taxonomic status of specimens of Rhinella collected from rainforests on the eastern Andean slopes and foothills of central Bolivia. The respective populations have been allocated to different nominal taxa, namely Rhinella fissipes and R. leptoscelis, in the past. By detailed morphological comparisons, including the type specimens...
Supplementary Table S1: Species, GenBank accession numbers,
voucher specimens, and locality information for 16S rRNA sequences
used in the genetic analysis.
We describe a large new species of leaf-tailed gecko endemic to northern Madagascar. Uroplatus garamaso sp. n. is the sister species of U. henkeli but differs by a genetic divergence > 8% in the mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene, by the absence of haplotype sharing in four nuclear-encoded genes analyzed, a smaller body size, slightly narrower tail, a mor...
Frogs of the Blommersia wittei complex are widespread in western and northern Madagascar, and are one of two clades of the family Mantellidae that have colonized the Comoran island of Mayotte. Based on a comprehensive set of DNA
sequences of the mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene and the nuclear-encoded RAG1 and SACS genes, integrated with morphological a...
Populations of phytotelmic frogs from northern Madagascar assigned to Guibemantis (Pandanusicola) pulcher are known
to differ genetically from populations further south in the eastern rainforest belt of the island, but to date, their status has not
been analyzed in depth. We combined molecular genetic data with an examination of color pattern to cl...
We studied the taxonomic status of glassfrogs collected in Departamento Huánuco, central Peru, which in the field were tentatively allocated to Chimerella, one of the twelve genera currently recognized in the family Centrolenidae. Detailed analyses of their morphology, bioacoustics, and molecular genetics supported their generic allocation and prov...
The small arboreal frog Guibemantis liber (Anura: Mantellidae) has served as an example for the existence of deep conspecific lineages that differ by a substantial amount in mitochondrial DNA but are similar in morphology and bioacoustics and thus are assigned to the same nominal species. During fieldwork in northern Madagascar, we identified addit...
How environmental factors shape patterns of biotic diversity in tropical ecosystems is an active field of research, but studies examining the possibility of ecological speciation in terrestrial tropical ecosystems are scarce. We use the isolated rainforest herpetofauna on the Montagne d'Ambre (Amber Mountain) massif in northern Madagascar as a mode...
A range-wide assessment of genetic variation in one mitochondrial (16S rRNA) and one nuclear-encoded (Rag-1) gene fragment of the widespread Madagascar frog Blommersia blommersae revealed the presence of up to 12 deep genetic lineages. Many of these differed by genetic distances >3% in the 16S gene. In the Ranomafana area in the southern central ea...
The Malagasy genus Gephyromantis contains 51 species of primarily terrestrial or scansorial frogs. Although many species are morphologically weakly divergent from each other, the combination of molecular and bioacoustic evi¬dence has led to a continuous flow of species discoveries in the last years. Previous works have notably shown the existence o...
Malagasy frogs of the subgenus Brygoomantis in the
mantellid frog genus Mantidactylus currently comprise 14
described species of mostly brown, riparian frogs. Data from
DNA barcoding suggested that the diversity of this subgenus
is dramatically underestimated by current taxonomy. We
here provide a comprehensive revision of this subgenus. We
use hyb...
The composition of cutaneous (skin-associated) bacterial communities of amphibians has been intensively studied in light of the potential of some of these commensal bacterial taxa to mitigate infection with the chytrid fungi Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and B. salamandrivorans (Bsal). However, surprisingly, the absolute densities in which th...
Although first biogeographic analyses of Madagascar's amphibian fauna were provided by Blommers-Schlösser and Blanc (1993), these could only provide first hints at possible patterns due to incomplete taxonomic and distributional knowledge at the time. Since this pioneering work, the combination of increased field exploration, integrative taxonomy,...
The Lygodactylus madagascariensis species group, constituting the subgenus Domerguella, currently contains five valid species of inconspicuous dwarf geckos from Madagascar’s humid forests, but at least 18 deep genetic lineages have been revealed by recent molecular studies. Given the high morphological similarity of these lineages, taxonomic resolu...
In order to improve the molecular resources available for conservation management of Madagascar’s threatened ichthyofauna, we elaborated a curated database of 2860 mitochondrial sequences of the mitochondrial COI, 16S and ND2 genes of Malagasy fishes, of which 1141 sequences of freshwater fishes were newly sequenced for this data set. The data set...
The subgenus Laurentomantis in the genus Gephyromantis contains some of the least known amphibian species of Madagascar. The six currently valid nominal species are rainforest frogs known from few individuals, hampering a full understanding of the species diversity of the clade. We assembled data on specimens collected during field surveys over the...
Lake sediments represent valuable and widely used archives for tracking environmental and biotic changes over time. Past aquatic communities are traditionally studied via morphological identification of the remains of organisms. However, molecular identification tools, such as DNA metabarcoding, have revolutionized the field of biomonitoring by ena...
Madagascar, one of the largest islands worldwide, is a global biodiversity conservation hot-spot, characterized by its biota's high degree of endemism. More than two thirds of the 169 Malagasy freshwater fish species that so far have been scientifically named are endemic and many also micro-endemic, i.e. only known from restricted regions or even a...
Mantellid frogs of the Madagascar-endemic Gephyromantis plicifer complex consist
of three nominal species (G. luteus, G. plicifer and G. sculpturatus) as well as
several genetically divergent lineages (candidate species), but uncertainties surround
the identity of the name-bearing types of all three established nomina. We
applied laboratory techniq...
We report anti-predator behavior of an individual of Cruziohyla craspedopus found at Panguana, Departamento Huánuco, Peru. It constitutes the first record of the species for this private protected area and central Peru.
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-021-01693-z
New genetic, bioacoustic and morphological data on green-coloured Boophis treefrogs from eastern Madagascar reveal an additional level of cryptic diversity in these frogs. Two candidate species, Boophis sp. Ca36 and Ca37, are closely related to each other and to B. sandrae, with uncorrected pairwise distances in the mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene as l...
Biological invasions are on the rise, with each invader carrying a plethora of associated microbes. These microbes play important, yet poorly understood, ecological roles that can include assisting the hosts in colonization and adaptation processes or as possible pathogens. Understanding how these communities differ in an invasion scenario may help...
Abstract Dwelling in a variety of aquatic habitats, one of the most abundant groups of microcrustaceans, ostracodes, are widely used indicator organisms in paleolimnological research. Typically, they are identified via traditional methods using morphological features but this may be excessively time‐consuming and prone to inter‐investigator variati...
Zootaxa is a mega-journal that since its inception, 20 years ago, has contributed to the documentation of the planet’s biodiversity. Its role concerning terrestrial vertebrates has been crucial especially for amphibians, which are the most threatened class of vertebrates. As current editors of the Amphibia section, we reviewed the state of knowledg...
Experimentally assessing the preferred body temperature (T pref) of ectothermic animals is important to understand thermal adaptation. In lizards, this variable is usually estimated by measuring body temperature in thermal gradients. To quantify the extent to which different experimental setups influence the inferred T pref values we submitted 65 i...
We studied the status of toads of the genus Rhinella collected in the southern Cordillera Azul, central Peru. Molecular analysis of the mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene revealed them to be members of the recently proposed Rhinella festae species group, and sister to R. lilyrodriguezae, a species known from northern areas of the Cordillera Azul. The new...
Species are the fundamental units of life and their recognition is essential for science and society. DNA barcoding, the use of a single and often mitochondrial gene, has been increasingly employed as a universal approach for the identification of animal species. However, this approach faces several challenges. Here, we demonstrate with empirical d...
While powerful and user-friendly software suites exist for phylogenetics, and an impressive cybertaxomic infrastructure of online species databases has been set up in the past two decades, software specifically targeted at facilitating alpha-taxonomic work, i.e., delimiting and diagnosing species, is still in its infancy. Here we present a project...
A wide range of data types can be used to delimit species and various computer-based tools dedicated to this task are now available. Although these formalized approaches have significantly contributed to increase the objectivity of SD under different assumptions, they are not routinely used by alpha-taxonomists. One obvious shortcoming is the lack...
Climate has a large impact on diversity and evolution of the world’s biota. The Eocene–Oligocene transition from tropical climate to cooler, drier environments was accompanied by global species turnover. A large number of Old World lacertid lizard lineages have diversified after the Eocene–Oligocene boundary. One of the most speciose reptile genera...
A new record and range extension for the endangered gecko
Paroedura masobe Nussbaum & Raxworthy, 1994 from the
highly disturbed forest of Betaikankana, eastern Madagascar.
Climate has a large impact on diversity and evolution of the world’s biota. The Eocene–Oligocene transition from tropical climate to cooler, drier environments was accompanied by global species turnover. A large number of Old World lacertid lizard lineages have diversified after the Eocene– Oligocene boundary. One of the most speciose reptile gener...
The genus Scaphiophryne (Anura: Microhylidae) contains at least nine species that, together with their probable sister genus Paradoxophyla, form the Madagascar-endemic subfamily Scaphiophryninae. Scaphiophryne are robust burrowing frogs with explosive breeding behavior and are characterized by a unique larval morphology, being intermediate between...
The Paroedura bastardi clade, a subgroup of the Madagascan gecko genus Paroedura, currently comprises four nominal species: P. bastardi, supposedly widely distributed in southern and western Madagascar, P. ibityensis, a montane endemic, and P. tanjaka and P. neglecta, both restricted to the central west region of the island. Previous work has shown...
The Paroedura bastardi clade, a subgroup of the Madagascan gecko genus Paroedura , currently comprises four nominal species: P. bastardi , supposedly widely distributed in southern and western Madagascar, P. ibityensis , a montane endemic, and P. tanjaka and P. neglecta , both restricted to the central west region of the island. Previous work has s...
We report on an introduced population of Italian Cave Salamander (Speleomantes italicus) that has been living in an abandoned quarry of the Solling area, Germany, within a beech forest near the town of Holzminden, since at least 2013. DNA sequences of the mitochondrial genes for 16S rRNA and cytochrome b confirm these specimens being genetically as...
Gut microorganisms are crucial for many biological functions playing a pivotal role in the host’s well-being. We studied gut bacterial community structure of marine iguana populations across the Galápagos archipelago. Marine iguanas depend heavily on their specialized gut microbiome for the digestion of dietary algae, a resource whose growth was st...
Evolutionary reduction of adult body size (miniaturization) has profound consequences for organismal biology and is an important subject of evolutionary research. Based on two individuals we describe a new, extremely miniaturized chameleon, which may be the world’s smallest reptile species. The male holotype of Brookesia nana sp. nov. has a snout–v...
Given that global amphibian population declines are in part associated with environmental thermal preferences of infectious pathogens, assessing variation of field body temperatures can contribute to a preliminary disease risk assessment. We evaluated the field body temperatures of the semi-aquatic frog Mantidactylus (Brygoomantis) bellyi from nort...
In Brazil’s Atlantic Forest (AF) biodiversity conservation is of key importance since the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) has led to the rapid loss of amphibian populations here and worldwide. The impact of Bd on amphibians is determined by the host's immune system, of which the skin microbiome is a critical component. The richn...
The northern part of Madagascar is well known for its high species diversity and endemism. Exceptional species richness is related to the existence of large forest blocks and mountain complexes. These areas shelter a diverse variety of habitats occupied by a wide diversity of species, including leaf-tailed geckos of the genus Uroplatus. Based on mo...
The salamander genus Salamandra is widespread across Europe, North Africa, and the Near East and is renowned for its conspicuous and polymorphic colouration and diversity of reproductive modes. The phylogenetic relationships within the genus, and especially among the highly polymorphic species S. salamandra, have been very challenging to elucidate,...
Taxonomic progress is often hindered by intrinsic factors, such as morphologically cryptic species that require a broad suite of methods to distinguish, and extrinsic factors, such as uncertainties in the allocation of scientific names to species. These uncertainties can be due to a wide variety of factors, including old and poorly preserved type s...
The chameleon Furcifer voeltzkowi (Boettger, 1893) from northwestern Madagascar was considered to be a synonym of Furcifer rhinoceratus for many decades and was resurrected only recently based on studies of the morphology and osteology of a few male specimens, which were collected more than 100 years ago. However, basic data on this species remain...
Diatoms (Bacillariophyceae) are characterized by silicified cell walls that favor their long-term preservation in sediments, therefore widely used as bioindicators of present and past water conditions. Alongside with traditional morphological analyses, metabarcoding has become a valuable tool to study the community structures of various organisms,...
Hybridization can leave genealogical signatures in an organism's genome, originating from the parental lineages and persisting over time. This potentially confounds phylogenetic inference methods that aim to represent evolution as a strictly bifurcating tree. We apply a phylotranscriptomic approach to study the evolutionary history of, and test for...
Zoologists have widely acknowledged the utility of classification systems for characterising variation in anuran egg and clutch types, tadpole morphotypes, embryonic and tadpole development, amplexus types and reproductive modes. These classification systems have facilitated unambiguous communication between researchers, often working in completely...
The chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), recently introduced from Asia to Europe, causes mortality in numerous species of salamanders and newts and has led to catastrophic declines and local extinctions of the European fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. Due to the continuous spread...
The salamander plague, caused by the amphibian chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), is one of the most devastating amphibian diseases, currently threatening the entire Western Palearctic caudate diversity with extinction. Apparently of Asian origin and recently introduced into Europe, Bsal is known from currently ca. 80 sites in...