The Herpetological Journal

pp.11-20 

Authors: Frank Glaw And Miguel Vences

Abstract: A new species of the Mantidactylus domerguei species group in the subgenus Blommersia is described from central eastern Madagascar. Mantidactylus sarotra sp. n. is morphologically similar to the syntopic M. blommersae but differs by smaller size, vocal sac coloration, advertisement cal Is and habitat of calling males. A phylogenetic analysis of 565 nucleotides of the mitochondrial l 6S rRNA gene of all described species of the M. domerguei group revealed that M. sarotra and M. blommersae are not sister species but are genetical ly highly differentiated (9.73% sequence divergence). M. sarotra was grouped with high bootstrap support as a sister species of M. kely. The two species share a general advertisement calI structure, vocal sac col oration and small size, but differ from each other in terms of skin texture, dorsal coloration, and pulse rate of vocalizations. The high differentiation among all species of the group (4.96% divergence between the closest relatives, M. blommersae and M. domerguei) indicate that speciation of the currently recognized taxa probably occurred several million years before the present.

Keywords: Mantidactylus sarotra sp. n., Blommersia, Madagascar, phylogeny, mitochondrial DNA, advertisement calls