Influence of environmental conditions on the distribution of Central Asian green toads with three ploidy levels |
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| Authors: | Spartak N. Litvinchuk Glib O. Mazepa Rosa A. Pasynkova Abdusattor Saidov Toszhiddin Satorov Yuriy A. Chikin Dmitriy A. Shabanov Angelica Crottini Leo J. Borkin Jury M. Rosanov Matthias Stöck |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Institute of Cytology, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia;2. Kharkiv National University, Kharkiv, Ukraine;3. Department of Population Biology, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden;4. Institute of Zoology and Parasitology, Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, Tajikistan;5. Institute of Zoology, Academy of Science of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Republic of Uzbekistan;6. Department of Zoology and Animal Ecology, Kharkiv National University, Kharkiv, Ukraine;7. Institute of Zoology, University of Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany;8. Universita′ degli Studi di Milano, Italy;9. Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia;10. Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland |
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| Abstract: | We studied the distribution of Palearctic green toads (Bufo viridis subgroup), an anuran species group with three ploidy levels, inhabiting the Central Asian Amudarya River drainage. Various approaches (one‐way, multivariate, components variance analyses and maximum entropy modelling) were used to estimate the effect of altitude, precipitation, temperature and land vegetation covers on the distribution of toads. It is usually assumed that polyploid species occur in regions with harsher climatic conditions (higher latitudes, elevations, etc.), but for the green toads complex, we revealed a more intricate situation. The diploid species (Bufo shaartusiensis and Bufo turanensis) inhabit the arid lowlands (from 44 to 789 m a.s.l.), while tetraploid Bufo pewzowi were recorded in mountainous regions (340–3492 m a.s.l.) with usually lower temperatures and higher precipitation rates than in the region inhabited by diploid species. The triploid species Bufo baturae was found in the Pamirs (Tajikistan) at the highest altitudes (2503–3859 m a.s.l.) under the harshest climatic conditions. |
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| Keywords: | Polyploidy genome size environmental conditions Bufo viridis subgroup |
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