You are here:
WHEN A PHYLOGENETIC TRICHOTOMY MAKES SENSES: PHYLOGEOGRAPHY OF BUFO PUNCTATUS AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE WARM DESERTS
Citation:
Jaeger, J R., B. R. Riddle, AND D F. Bradford. WHEN A PHYLOGENETIC TRICHOTOMY MAKES SENSES: PHYLOGEOGRAPHY OF BUFO PUNCTATUS AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE WARM DESERTS. Presented at Annual meeting of the Wildlife Society, Western Section, Visalia, CA, March 7-8, 2002.
Impact/Purpose:
The primary objectives of this research are to:
Develop methodologies so that landscape indicator values generated from different sensors on different dates (but in the same areas) are comparable; differences in metric values result from landscape changes and not differences in the sensors;
Quantify relationships between landscape metrics generated from wall-to-wall spatial data and (1) specific parameters related to water resource conditions in different environmental settings across the US, including but not limited to nutrients, sediment, and benthic communities, and (2) multi-species habitat suitability;
Develop and validate multivariate models based on quantification studies;
Develop GIS/model assessment protocols and tools to characterize risk of nutrient and sediment TMDL exceedence;
Complete an initial draft (potentially web based) of a national landscape condition assessment.
This research directly supports long-term goals established in ORDs multiyear plans related to GPRA Goal 2 (Water) and GPRA Goal 4 (Healthy Communities and Ecosystems), although funding for this task comes from Goal 4. Relative to the GRPA Goal 2 multiyear plan, this research is intended to "provide tools to assess and diagnose impairment in aquatic systems and the sources of associated stressors." Relative to the Goal 4 Multiyear Plan this research is intended to (1) provide states and tribes with an ability to assess the condition of waterbodies in a scientifically defensible and representative way, while allowing for aggregation and assessment of trends at multiple scales, (2) assist Federal, State and Local managers in diagnosing the probable cause and forecasting future conditions in a scientifically defensible manner to protect and restore ecosystems, and (3) provide Federal, State and Local managers with a scientifically defensible way to assess current and future ecological conditions, and probable causes of impairments, and a way to evaluate alternative future management scenarios.
Description:
Bufo punctatus, the red-spotted toad, is a common, desert-adapted anuran with a widespread distribution throughout warm, and regions of North America. This distribution makes this species ideal for evaluating alternative scenarios of biotic response to geotectonically and climatically mediated episodes of landscape transformation of aridlands (e.g., earth history since the late Tertiary). We used 654 base pairs of mitochondrial cytochrome b sequence data from II 9 samples to evaluate phylogeography throughout most of the species range. Analyses of these data reveal three deep evolutionary lineages with sequences divergences of about 7-7.5 %, after adjusting for intra-lineage variation. The geographic distribution of haplotypes within theses three lineages are roughly concordant with the general boundaries of the Baja California Peninsular Desert, a combined Sonoran-Mojave deserts region, and a Chihuahuan Desert-Colorado Plateau region. This general concordance between haplotypes and ecoregions, and the depth of these lineages, indicate that the B. punctatus (as currently recognized) evolved independently within, and along with, each of three core warm desert regions.