Sistemática filogenética de Thoropa Cope, 1865 (Anura: Cycloramphidae) com base em caracteres larvais e adultos

Abstract

The neotropical genus Thoropa Cope is known for bringing together species that present reproduction and development associated with thin sheets of water that flow over rocky outcrops. Species in the genus have exotrophic and quasi-terrestrial tadpoles with morphological adaptations that allow survival in this microhabitat. Currently, seven species are recognized for the genus and recent phylogenetic hypotheses suggest distinct possibilities regarding taxa related to Thoropa. The consensus is that Thoropa composes the Cycloramphidae family together with the Cycloramphus species. Analyzes carried out so far based on morphology, evaluated a limited range of characters against the morphological diversity of the group. Here, with the evaluation of a set of larval and adult morphological attributes, I investigate which hypotheses can result and what these indicate about the proposition of taxa and the origin and fixation of characters associated with the evolution of the genus. To this end, the seven nominal species of the genus and 28 more for the outgroup were included, among members of the genus Cycloramphus, and of the families Alsodidae, Batrachylidae, Hylodidae, Rhinodermatidae and Telmatobidae, associated with Cycloramphidae in previous hypotheses. 125 characters from different sources were observed and described, which supported the construction of a matrix containing discrete morphological variations representing alternatives for the same homologous equivalent. The recombination between the proposals evaluated in the TNT program resulted in 110 equally parsimonious cladograms, each one having 359 steps. In a summary of these cladograms representing a consensus among these results, the seven species of Thoropa form a monophyletic group that presents four synapomorphies. The hypothesis also suggests that two groups exist in the genus, one group formed by species with small adult semaphoronts, Thoropa petropolitana group and another with larger traffic lights, Thoropa miliaris group. The Cycloramphidae family also appears as monophyletic. In addition to the results presented here, four works in which I am first author/collaborator were developed and published during the doctoral period, containing partial results of this research and extensive discussions on the larval morphology, ontogeny, systematics, and evolution of Thoropa and Cycloramphidae.